Scorpius Malfoy and the Improbable Plot
by opalish
Summary: Scorpius really should have listened to his father's numerous and dire warnings about the Potter clan. Harry feels his pain. Gen crackfic WIP, yo. Seriously, so cracky.
1. In Which Harry and Scorpius Chill

Second attempt at uploading ftw.

SO. Um. I've ventured back into the land of fanfic. HP fanfic. EVERY TIME I TRY TO GET OUT, THEY DRAW ME BACK IN.

There really are no words to express how sorry I am for writing and posting this story. No words. Also, desperately, woefully unbeta'd. Constructively criticize me, baby, constructively criticize me hard.

DISCLAIMER: Not mine. None of it. Except the plot, such as it is.

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SCORPIUS MALFOY AND THE IMPROBABLE PLOT

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"Al and James are fighting again," Scorpius observed, though there was a hint of worry in the set of his mouth that belied his bored, almost indifferent tone. Al had gone to fetch his broom just a minute before, and—for the eighth time in half as many days—a screaming match erupted between Harry's sons the moment they got within two meters of each other.

"So I hear," Harry muttered, glancing at the ceiling in exasperation. Al and James' snarls and shouts were easily audible even from a floor away, as were Lily's shrill demands that they both shut _up_, she was _trying _to _read_, for Merlin's sake.

"Are you going to stop them?" Scorpius asked, his voice carefully bland, and Harry grinned a bit at how casual Scorpius was with him these days. They'd never been less than civil to one another, but Scorpius had, for a while, treated him with a forced and slightly nervous disdain that screamed 'I'm talking to a man who spent his childhood and adolescence hexing most of my family tree into a family stack-of-kindling. _Awkward._'

"I think," Harry said, as the shouts grew louder, and as—judging by the loud slam of a door and the thudding of someone stomping across the hall—Lily emerged from her terrifyingly pink cave to join in, "that this is one of those times when it's best to let them argue it out."

Scorpius heaved a heavy sigh. "I don't see why they have to do this," he grumbled unhappily, and Harry felt a flash of sympathy for the boy. Scorpius was best friends with Al, but he'd gotten along fairly well with James ever since the Howler Debacle of Halloween '17. Having one's friends at each other's throats was, as Harry knew from experience, deeply unpleasant. "They've always gotten along just fine before this summer. Mostly, at least."

They winced in tandem as Lily's voice got more and more shrill, until it was practically a shriek. Lils was generally an easy-going kid, cheerful and frighteningly yet endearingly manipulative, but dealing with her brothers' moodiness had apparently terminally harshed her mellow. That didn't necessarily sound like a bad thing to Harry, who was instinctively distrustful of words like 'mellow', but he'd long since given up on translating his daughter's unique brand of jargon. Lily was a small redheaded melting pot of slang; she was, he sometimes suspected, where bad grammar and inappropriate exclamations went when they died.

"It's hormones," Harry diagnosed gloomily. "And—well, James has always been accustomed to getting his own way, as I'm sure you've noticed." Scorpius nodded approvingly—after all, he was accustomed to quite the same, which tended to be the source of his own occasional passionate fights with James.

"But Al's become much less reserved over the past couple of years, less likely to just follow James' example," Harry continued, not mentioning the undying gratitude he felt towards Scorpius for being the one to draw Al out of his shell. Despite the current consequences. "So…James is hurt that Albus doesn't follow him blindly any more, and Al's annoyed that James still expects him to. At least, that's Ginny's theory, and she'd know better than me."

"I expect she would," Scorpius agreed with a genteel shudder. "I cannot imagine having six siblings. I tried once, but I woke up screaming."

Harry laughed. "I don't know how her parents managed it. I can barely handle three." Though in all honesty, three was an enormous understatement. After all, ever since he was old enough to simultaneously gnaw on Harry's ear _and_ fill it with baby drool, Teddy spent practically every other night with his godfather. And when the Great Ted-And-Andromeda-Conflict-of-2013-Through-2017-With-A-Brief-Break-In-2014-For-A-Nap-And-Peaceable-Chat-About-The-Weather-These-Days hit, he'd spent weeks at a times with Harry and Ginny during his summer breaks, sharing James' room and skulking about the house, muttering darkly about overbearing grandmothers and the howling abyss of his soul, while his hair went from blood-red to deep, shiny black to a shocking but somehow mournful pink.

Harry had tried to cheer him up, but Teddy hadn't wanted cheering-up or understanding. After all, he'd snarled one afternoon when the crushing agony of his existence became unbearable, who could understand his totally unique and original pain? When had there ever been another teenager orphaned at a young age and raised by overbearing, unfair relatives, a teenager with too many expectations heaped upon him at too young an age, a teenager with unreasonable and uncontrollable hair, a teenager who _on top of all this_ had an enormously awkward crush on a Ravenclaw for most of his fourth and fifth years at Hogwarts… (These days, now that Teddy was mostly grown and angst-free, Harry thought bringing up that particular conversation at every possible opportunity was just revenge for what his godson had put him through.)

And of course Rose and Hugo were over all the time, to the point where Harry and Ginny had begun making a couple extra servings of each meal, just in case. Plus, whenever Teddy visited recently, Victoire came with him, her younger brother in tow—Louis and James were becoming quite fast friends, now that James and Al didn't pal around so exclusively.

Not to mention, if Freddie and Roxie and Molly sneaked in one more time to avoid their respective parents after pranks gone horribly wrong (or, in the kids' and George's opinion, horribly right), Harry was going to lose the last tattered shreds of his sanity. And that wasn't even getting into Lorcan and Lysander's bi-monthly sleepover (Luna and Rolf weren't likely to ever settle down, but both thought it would be good for their twins to have at least one place in the wizarding world that felt like a real home), and the occasional Potter-Dursley child-foisting (supposedly meant to broaden respective horizons, but really just to let one set of parents have a few days in a semi-quiet house). Or, for that matter, Scorpius' near-constant presence the past two summers.

"Father grumbles about how he can hardly handle one," Scorpius said, and Harry twitched a little at the blissful, impossible dream of a single teenager in the house. "At least, he used to before Hogwarts. Now he grumbles about handling four. He got rather worked up when James and Al went at it in our parlor the other day, you know, particularly when Lils got involved. Wanted me to tell you that if you don't get them under control, he'll take matters into his own hands and hex their tongues out."

"Oh, if only," Harry said wistfully, just as the yelling reached a fever pitch, then abruptly stopped. And then—"DAD!" from his boys, and a higher-pitched "Yo, Daddyo" from his unique and irreplaceable Lily.

"Remind me why I didn't just stay at work Friday," Harry groaned, and Scorpius grinned with more than a little malicious enjoyment of his pain. "I could've slept at my desk. Stayed until Monday afternoon. Or September 2nd."

"As I recall, you wanted to. And then Mrs. Potter said she'd kill you and your children without hesitation or remorse if she didn't get away from the shouting for a solid forty-eight hours, and that no fair trial would end in her conviction 'cause you'd all deserve it, you bastards, and how can you expect her to work in this noise, she's got a deadline in three days and if she misses it she won't be held accountable for the grisly and terrible things she will do to you," Scorpius recited with an innocent smile that wouldn't have fooled a Confunded Hufflepuff firstie.

"Right," Harry said, and let loose a sigh the likes of which had he'd not exhaled since his own turbulent teenaged years. "I've had enough of this, now, and it's going to end," he added with the same sort of determination that had tripped up Voldemort's plans year after year and yet, Harry already knew, would falter in the face of petulant teenaged whining.

"If all else fails, bribe them," Scorpius offered helpfully, and Harry entertained briefly the possibility of offering Draco a three-for-one child exchange, one-time-only, come on, it's a great deal with low, low interest and an offspring-back guarantee if your eardrums aren't completely ruptured within a fortnight, plus we'll throw in this free toaster oven and it really, really works.

"I don't suppose," he started, but Scorpius was already shaking his head.

"Not a chance," the boy said apologetically, or as apologetically as a Malfoy could get (which wasn't very), and Harry nodded.

"Probably not," he agreed regretfully, and headed for the stairs.

"There goes a brave, brave man," Scorpius narrated dramatically, clasping his hands over his heart, "to confront a fate far worse than death. Will he survive? Will the world? Who can say, in the face of such evil, what the future might bring?"

Harry barely remembered in time to wipe the grin off his face before confronting his three brain-addled bratlings. Amused smiles were not particularly conducive to effective parental discipline. He'd figured that one out all on his own. Ginny had been proud.

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So I may have more written. MAYBE. Not sure if I should post, though, as this is The Most Pointless thing I've ever written, no lie. I feel guilty to even ask for reviews for this, but I am a shameless review h0r, so I will beat my integrity into submission and ask: reviews plz?

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	2. In Which Harry Is Totally Unfair, Dudes

I, uh, actually heart the epilogue, sap and predictability and all. Harry has a family! He's an awesome dad! Albus Severus Potter! And Ron and Hermione have a son named Hugo. _A son named Hugo._ I love it. So I wrote this story, as I must inevitably destroy the things I love. (This may or may not be a parody of a serious story I wrote about the Next Gen. MAYBE.)

Next Gen, as established by JKR—HG's kids: James, Albus, Lily. RHr's: Rose, Hugo. Bill and Fleur's: Victoire, Dominique, Louis. Percy's: Molly, Lucy. George and Angelina's: Fred, Roxanne. Luna's: Lorcan, Lysander. Draco's: Scorpius. None of them belong to me.

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CHAPTER TWO: In Which Harry Is Totally Unfair, Dudes

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Harry's darling little demons were congregated in James' room, which looked not only like a jungle, but a jungle that'd been hit by a tornado. No, more like a jungle that'd been hit by a tornado and then invaded by a gaggle of prepubescent girls hopped up on soda. Soda, and a stash of magazines filled with pictures of Orlando Bloom showing off tantalizing hints of a hairless chest and a second facial expression.

Not that Lily's friends frightened him or anything. And he certainly hadn't been scarred for life after her last slumber party. He barely even whimpered or twitched, these days, when he heard high-pitched giggling.

The nail polish, the way it had spattered like sparkly pink blood all over the walls... He still had flashbacks, sometimes.

Harry cleared his throat pointedly, stoically refusing to dwell on the nightmarish memories.

He was mildly impressed by how quickly his darlings lost their venomous glares when they realized they were no longer alone. Sneers were replaced by long-suffering shiny-eyed stares meant to communicate how, in general, each of them was oppressed unfairly by the others, how they were martyrs foiled by their siblings in their altruistic quests for peace and justice, how oh, they tried to speak sense, but the others were just beyond reason and logic, and really, wouldn't it be kinder in the end just to put the others out of their misery…

For a moment, they all tried to out-innocent each other, but gave up after unblemished virtue in the face of impossible odds began to look distinctly like constipation.

"We've decided," James said with smug authority, while Harry told himself sternly that he was Not Amused, not at all, not in the least, "on the macaroni and cheese for dinner tonight." Al scowled a little, while Lily looked mostly satisfied.

"I still think Scorpius should have a vote," Al grumbled, arms crossed over his chest.

"Yeah, 'cause he'll vote for whatever you want," James said. "And I'm not eating eggplant with a side of mashed eggplant for dinner, you weirdo."

Harry forgot all about being amused. "That's what the argument was about?" he demanded, dazed. "The last twenty minutes you've been yelling about what we should have for _dinner_?"

They nodded, only Al having the decency to look a bit sheepish about the entire affair. Well, Lily tried for her patented 'adorably hangdog' pout, which Harry was fairly certain she practiced in the mirror, but a single cutting glare was enough to put an end to that.

"Right," Harry said, something inside him snapping, crackling, _and_ popping. "That's it. Enough is enough."

His children looked alarmed. "Yo yo Daddyo?" Lily said, eyes wide. "We were just--"

"Not. Another. Word," Harry said curtly, and the 'Daddy's Little Princess' simper went the way of the discarded 'adorably hangdog' and 'innocently constipated' approaches. Lily's arsenal was dangerous and varied, but she was smart enough to know when she didn't have a chance in hell of winning.

"Er," James tried hesitantly, and subsided when the Paternal Glower of Doom was turned in his direction. Al didn't say a thing, just shrank in on himself a little and stared down at his trainers—and that, more than anything, would normally have been enough not only to break through Harry's steely resolve, but also to shred it into tiny steely shards and leave it whimpering sadly, brokenly in the dirt…

…but not this time.

Let them look woebegone and nervous. He'd had it up to_ here_.

And in this case, _here_ was only reachable by Firebolt or jet plane. One more word from any of them, and you'd need the damn Hubble.

"I'm calling up your Aunt Hermione," he said, each word quiet and precise and dramatically over-enunciated. Harry took a rather shameful satisfaction in the way their faces drained of color and their eyes went wide and terrified. "I'm telling her precisely what your behavior has been like recently, and how you've driven your mother to spending a weekend helping Uncle George at the shop, for Merlin's sake, to finish her article and get away from the noise and chaos _here_. And then I am leaving you with her in a small, dim, windowless and sound-proofed room while Scorpius and I meet Teddy and Victoire for ice cream—and no, I will not be bringing any home for you." Unless, he added silently, he could find anchovy-flavored ice cream. Or, even better, anchovy-flavored sorbet.

"Dad," James groaned, looking vaguely green. "Dad, that's not _fair_."

Lily grasped Albus arm and was using it to keep herself upright, the shock of his announcement obviously leaving her weak in the knees. "Oh em gee," she gasped. "So unchill. _So very_ unchill."

And Al, well, his eyes were already glazed over in a preemptive anti-Hermione defense. Just for that, Harry would ask her to make the lecture extra-long and painfully, ear-meltingly dull.

Part of him rather thought he should take pity, but Harry had never been one for spoiling his children, or sparing discipline when it was really necessary—indulging them too much would turn them into mini Dudleys (or Merlin forbid, miniature Draco Malfoys), which was a fate not to be contemplated. And if drastic measures were required, then drastic measures he would take.

"Downstairs, all of you. And if I hear one raised voice, one single shout, I'll see to it that your Uncle Percy has a talk with you too. A _long_ talk."

There. That had them looking appropriately horrified—because Hermione at least recognized (and rejoiced in) the effect her lectures had, and everyone knew it. Percy, though, Percy was _earnest_. Percy used words like 'edification' and 'youngsters' without irony, and meant them, really meant them.

Harry knew his spawn well. Hermione's obvious sadism, they could take—oh, it'd hurt, but they'd recover easily enough, once the echoes of her voice stopped ringing in their ears. But they wouldn't survive one of Percy's serious, "All right, chaps—er, and chappette, let's all sit down and talk this out, because I know the Youth of Today is capable of learning and being reasonable" talks.

Oh, they'd live, but their lives and minds would be forever altered. Some things, as Harry well knew, there was just no coming back from.

Shoulders slumped, the Potter children trooped out of the room. "This is mega-woeful sad," Lily opined mournfully as she went. They shot him reproachful, kicked-puppy looks as they filed past him; Lily's was best, of course, finely crafted to induce overwhelming guilt and remorse, but even James' betrayed stare deserved at least an 8.6 from the judges.

Merlin. This was just like being at work—and considering he was in charge of an entire department full of paranoid, battle-scarred, rage-fueled, egotistical, and wand-happy wizards and witches, and his job was basically to keep them in line and at peace with one another _while simultaneously_ fending off the rest off various Ministry officials (dozens of powerful, influential, paranoid, egotistical, greed-fueled and rumor-happy wizards and witches), _while also _keeping the paparazzi satisfied (and really, reporters were the worst of all)…

Well. Once he stopped crying on the inside, he'd probably be rather proud of his three hell-beasts.

In the meantime, though, he needed to firecall an old friend.

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Reviews are scotch for the soul. Occasionally there's a sharp burn, but mostly there's sheer awesome. Constructive alcoholic awesome.


	3. In Which Harry Dies Inside, A Little

Disclaimer: I own nuthink.

I'll eventually meander my way to a plot, or at least something vaguely plot-like that could possibly pass for a viable storyline in dim light, if you squint—but this chapter and the next are basically filler chapters any sensible writer would've cut completely. Just to warn ya'll. Also, I am Not Happy with this chapter, but am too eager to get to the rest of the story (read: lazy) to spend more time fixing it up.

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In Which Harry Dies Inside, A Little

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"This isn't exactly a recommended form of punishment in any of the books _I've_ read," Hermione said. She hadn't been fooled for a second by Harry's opening gambit of 'Doctor Spock says…', but he had high hopes that his favorite sister-in-law might be just amused enough to help him out anyway.

It wasn't that she didn't adore his kids, because she did, and they adored her as well—the lectures wouldn't be nearly so horrible if they weren't more used to their Aunt Hermione being kind of amazingly cooltastic, as Lily would (unfortunately) say.

But Hermione had a stealthy but strong sadistic streak, and she was a fan of discipline. And every child with Weasley blood knew to fear her when she was riled. The House-Elf-Fiasco-of-'12 had seen to that. Not to mention the Second Great Monopoly Incident. And the Scrabble Catastrophe really didn't bear thinking about.

So yeah, Harry was almost positive that she was just the woman for this job.

"I can't take it anymore, and they always listen when you yell at them," Harry said, perilously close to begging. "And don't think I never figured out your lecture-Ron-and-Harry-til-their-spirits-break-and-they-agree-to-obey-your-every-whim-dear-god-if-only-you'll-stop strategy when we were in school."

(Even Ron had figured that one out—"Well, yeah, it's a bit scary, and she's obviously mental," the redhead had said with a shrug the first and only time he and Harry had actually discussed the Lectures. "But…it's kind of, um, endearing, too. You know?" Harry did not in fact know, and counted himself the luckier and the saner for his ignorance.)

"For all the good it did," Hermione scoffed, but she seemed pleased by Harry's confidence in her ability to crush the proudest of souls into cringing servitude. "Well. I suppose it can't hurt. Rose and Hugo are almost immune to my…methods, these days, I'm afraid. I imagine it will be nice to have—a new audience."

The last three words had precisely the same intonations Harry had once heard from a vampire purring happily about "oh, _fresh meat_, all that tasty nutritious blood to be spilled, with its yummy nutritious platelets" before he and Ron quite surprised it by ensuring that all of _its_ dubiously nummy blood was spilled, delicious nutritious platelets and all.

"You're a bit scary," he observed admiringly.

"Yes," Hermione agreed with a self-satisfied Mona Lisa-type smile. "I know."

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After assuring Hermione that on a painful-lecture scale of 1-to-Filch, round-about Binns-level would be fine, Harry and Scorpius headed out for ice cream—Teddy only lived a few minutes away, and neither Potter Patriarch nor Malfoy Heir were opposed to a short walk outside on a nice afternoon. "We'll swing by Teddy's flat, and Victoire will no doubt 'just happen' to be there," Harry planned aloud.

"And 'just happen' to be flushed and partially-clothed," Scorpius said a bit snidely, but Harry was too amused to scold.

Besides, telling a Malfoy not to be snide was like telling Hermione not to be smart, or Ron not to be tall, or Lily not to be incomprehensible, or Ginny not to be blisteringly, scorchingly hot. Just not going to happen.

"Right," he said. "So we wait for them to get dressed, then go for ice cream and maybe a stroll around Diagon. Teddy's been wanting to tell you that, er, Andromeda says to tell your Gran that she's not talking to her until your Gran apologizes for what she said about Our Ted-The-Senior last February, and that she—Andromeda, not your Gran—most certainly isn't inviting her to that extremely _decadent_ and _exclusive_ garden party she's hosting next Friday at four at Tonks Place, London, RSVP, wear slightly-but-not-too-very-formal-formalwear, thank you, but your Gran can't come because she's not invited, and everyone will be there and know that she wasn't, muahaha, and by the by, thanks for the lovely new hat; she—Andromeda, that is—quite likes it, and she hopes your Gran enjoyed those brownies she sent last week, plus Scorpius is a lovely boy, nothing like his prat of a father at all."

"Great Aunt Andromeda's a bit strange," Scorpius mused after a moment spent untangling Harry's impressively word-for-word (and cackle-for-cackle and emphasis-for-emphasis) recitation.

Harry nodded wordlessly, rather feeling he'd used up his hourly speaking quota just on that message. Also, his lungs burned with the fire of a thousand blazing suns.

"But then, so's Gran," Scorpius added with a shrug, evidently unconcerned by his entire family's utter lunacy. "She wants me to tell Teddy that she's not talking to Aunt Andromeda until she—Aunt Andromeda, not Gran—takes back what she said about Our Draco last January, and that she's a horrible old hag for saying it in the first place, and that she's most decidedly not invited to the ball Gran's hosting in three months, Malfoy Manor, RSVP, extremely-very-formal-wear-only, and everyone will be there and know Aunt Andromeda wasn't, oh, and the brownies were delicious, thanks Lovey, and they should get together and not talk to each other on Sunday instead of Saturday this week, Gran's busy not-talking to Grandfather Lucius all Saturday. Oh, and that Teddy really should stop wearing those plaid pants all the time, they're positively horrific, especially with those Hawaiian shirts, which should be Unforgivables in and of themselves, Dearie."

"She's got a point about the plaid," Harry said after a moment's reflection.

"Hufflepuffs," Scorpius agreed scornfully. "Can't even trust them to dress themselves. You'd think Victoire would do something about it." Even Draco had once admitted that Bill's branch of the Weasley Shrub had somehow, against all odds, developed good fashion sense, and that it might not even be entirely Fleur's doing.

Harry, who'd had a very enlightening conversation with Teddy a year or so ago, after the third Tartan-Robe-And-Neon-Hair-Incident, hmmed neutrally under his breath. Teddy might've been a Hufflepuff at Hogwarts, but the boy was not lacking in slyness.

"You see, the uglier my clothes are, the quicker Victoire is to get me out of 'em," Teddy had told him smugly, after assuring his godfather that no, he wasn't colorblind, _really_. "It's a sacrifice, but one I'm willing to make for the cause." Harry, who'd changed both Teddy and Victoire's diapers on a near-daily basis during their respective infancies, had been too busy cringing in horror to reply.

Harry and Scorpius subsided into a companionable quietude. After a few minutes, Harry stuck his hands in his pocket, and loudly breathed in the scent of summer. Scorpius didn't, because that would be common, but he allowed himself a happy sigh at the silence, the blessed silence.

"Do you suppose we could get Al and James to not-talk?" Scorpius asked after a few moments, out of morbid curiosity. "The shouting and recriminations aren't amusing anymore, you know, and last night I went home and couldn't hear anything for hours. Anything," he said, darkly, "but the echoes of their screams."

"Knowing them, they'd make your Gran and Andromeda's not-talking look positively stoic by comparison," Harry replied. "Now shush up or I'll cry, I really will."

Scorpius grinned.

They arrived at Teddy's place fairly quickly. Victoire just happened to be there, and both she and Teddy just so happened to be half-dressed and rather flushed. Harry and Scorpius were, of course, quite shocked by it all.

Teddy winked at Harry as he shrugged on a pink plaid button-down over his yellow Hufflepuffs Do It Better t-shirt, waggling his eyebrows (which, given that this was Teddy, meant that one of his eyebrows ended up at his hairline and one a little below his cheekbone) and murmuring, "Sacrifice for the cause."

Harry died a little inside. Teddy prodded his eyebrows back into place and turned them tiger-striped, and Harry died a little more.

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	4. In Which Teddy Is Silenced By Love

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Wasn't planning on uploading this just yet, but I'm going to be out of town tomorrow and ridiculously busy most of next week, so hey, what the hell.

Please to be reviewing? I_ crave _acknowledgement.

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Chapter Four: In Which Teddy Is Silenced By Love

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A half hour later, at the new Fortescue's (run by the original Fortescue's cousin, a woman who was perhaps less knowledgeable when it came to goblin warfare but rather more so when it came to the delicate and intricate inner workings of a Triple-Choco-Fudgebuster-Sundae), Harry decided contentedly that if silence were a flavor of ice cream, he'd never have chocolate again.

Unless it was chocolate silence. Mmm, chocolate silence.

Harry told himself that he was not, in fact, salivating over metaphorical ice cream, but he'd grown quite jaded with himself after the Cubicle Incident of '05 and had begun to suspect he might be a bit of a pathological liar, really. Sensibly, though, he set nagging self-doubt to the side in favor of his Super-Duper-Toffee-Choco-Chip-Yummy-Nummy cone, with sprinkles. _Rainbow_ sprinkles. Sparkly rainbow sprinkles.

"Oh, Scorpius," Teddy said after a moment, looking quite content with a vanilla cone and an adoring armful of Victoire. "Gran Andromeda wanted me to tell you to tell Great Aunt Narcissa that--"

Harry wept a bit on the inside, and resolved to get another cone. With extra super-sparkly rainbow sprinkles. Cold comfort, but comfort nonetheless.

But then Victoire became his new favorite person in the universe when, halfway through Teddy's stumbling, half-forgotten recitation of his Gran's message (he didn't even remember the muahaha, Harry noted with a craftsman's scorn for a rank amateur), she lost patience.

Quite calmly, she reached over and stuffed her boyfriend's ice cream cone in his mouth, holding it there until he gave up trying to talk and started whimpering in pain from the brain freeze. His hair went an alarming shade of agonized orange.

"That's better," Victoire said, satisfied. "Scorpius, I believe you got the gist of the message?" She twirled a long strand of light hair around one finger in a deliberate, mildly threatening sort of way.

Victoire was inarguably lovely, but not classically so. Dominant Veela genes had battled it out viciously with irrepressible Weasley genes, and the two had eventually been forced into a compromise, leaving Harry's neice with a spattering of pale freckles across her nose and cheeks, big hazel eyes, and glossy pale pink hair.

"Harry told me earlier," Scorpius said diffidently. He was staring at Victoire with profound admiration, the sort only violence or attractive older women (in this case, both) could inspire in a teenaged boy.

Then again, given that Scorpius was a Malfoy, perhaps he was just gazing so appreciatively at Victoire's shiny, shiny hair.

"You could've said," Teddy muttered, shooting Harry a dark look. He wiped the last remnants of ice cream off his chin with his hand, stared at it, shrugged, and slurped it off with excessive vigor and application of tongue. Victoire cringed.

"Remember that time you told me about how no other teenager before you had ever experienced your pain?" Harry asked cheerfully. Teddy shut up quickly, glancing around with furtive care to ensure no one might have overheard.

Scorpius coughed lightly to get his red-faced cousin's attention (and when metamorphmagi blushed, they didn't screw around—Teddy was practically maroon, all the way to the tips of his hair and ears). "Ah, Gran wanted me to tell you to tell Aunt Andromeda," he began, but Victoire began tapping their table slowly with very long, excessively manicured fingernails, and it sounded like the distant beat of the drums of war.

Scorpius wisely fell silent. Harry resolved to buy Victoire something truly amazing for her next birthday. Like a pony. Girls liked ponies, right? Lily was always going on about flesh-eating thestral foals and how cute they were and how she wanted one, Dad, please, how come he never let her have anything she wanted, he was totally unchill, like, Sahara-desert-in-midday unchill.

"So," Teddy said eventually, shooting his girlfriend a wary glance to see how this verbal foray would be received. She rolled her eyes at his rather theatric show of caution, and he relaxed. "You really went to Aunt Hermione?" He sounded reluctantly impressed by the depths of petty evil to which Harry was willing to sink in order to get some little peace and quiet.

"I expect she's having loads of fun," Harry said with a fond smile. "She actually seemed kind of eager. I think she might even break out the board games."

Teddy blanched. "I remember," he said, in the distant tones of one reliving past horrors, "the Monopoly Incident. Oh, I remember it well."

"Which one?" Victoire asked, shuddering delicately. "I witnessed at least three, myself. And all of them are seared into my brain forever. But none of them…or even the Risk Incident of '16…can really hold a candle to--"

"The Scrabble Catastrophe," Teddy, Harry, and Victoire finished together, in tones of deep foreboding.

"I don't understand," Scorpius said, brow furrowed.

"Be glad, kid," Teddy said grimly. "Be glad."

"Hermione doesn't like to lose," Harry half-explained. There was a reason she'd always refused to play chess with Ron, after the first few losses. "She can get…"

"Frightening," Victoire said hollowly. "Do you remember, the time my mother got Board Walk and Aunt Hermione…" She trailed off, unable to discuss the trauma—the years had not completely healed that wound. It was a mental scar everyone in their family shared.

"I still hear the screams at night, sometimes," Teddy confessed, his arm tightening protectively around Victoire's shoulders.

"If I ever marry into your family," Scorpius informed them, "And it would be hard not to, given that it makes up about half the Wizarding World these days… Well, I shall take my spouse far, far away, where the rest of your kind cannot hope follow. And if you do try to find us, I will not be merciful."

"Fair enough," Harry allowed, and hastily finished his ice cream. He was beginning to think maybe calling Hermione had been a bit, well, harsh.

* * *

Lily remembered, if only vaguely, that there had once been a time before the voice, oh sweet Merlin the voice.

Her ears ached. Her eyes watered. She clung to her brothers for strength against the storm, the torrent, the ever-flowing, raging river of words.

Would it never end? Would she never know again the blessed sound of silence? Would the voice never stop?

Hermione glanced at her watch, and decided they'd had enough of Phase One. She was starting to give herself a headache, anyway.

"So," she said brightly. "Who's up for Scrabble?"

Their whimpers were the whimpers of the damned, and sweet, sweet music to her ears.

* * *

"It was a long, long evening," Hermione informed Harry after he'd checked to make sure the brats weren't too traumatized. She'd done a good job, he'd give her that—James was refusing to come out from under his bed, and Harry had high hopes that the slang had been scared right out of Lily's twisted little brain after, according to Al, a dreadfully dull forty-five minute talk on the Wonders of Grammar and the Beautiful Purity of Language.

No wonder little Hugo was…well, the way he was.

All in all, Al was the only one who seemed to have escaped the evening more or less unscathed. Harry was including Hermione in that estimation—his kids weren't the sort to go down without a fight, after all, and she still looked distinctly frazzled even after two cups of cocoa and a thorough update on Teddy's never-ending quest for the perfect job (high-paying, low-effort, fun, exciting, with a hint of danger and absolutely no Weasleys) and Victoire's recent astounding successes in Experimental Charms research.

"It can't have been too bad," Harry said; even Albus had looked a bit peaky before he stumbled off to bed, after all, so Hermione must've come out on top.

"You owe me," Hermione said, eyes narrowed dangerously.

"No I don't," he replied automatically, edging backwards. He was starting to think that perhaps this was a conversation not best suited for the kitchen. Too many heavy or sharp objects around. "We're even now—remember, you made me take Rose and Hugo to the London Wizarding Zoo two weeks ago--"

"But then you begged me to come talk Ginny out of strangling Scorpius Malfoy to death last Sunday--"

"We agreed the Zoo was worth two favors!" Harry cried. He could still see Rose's bloodthirsty, fiendish smile, could still hear the tigers' enraged roars (in English, for their lawyers—it had been a long, strange trip). Those poor, poor animal handlers.

"And tonight was worth two favors as well," Hermione snapped, clearly Meaning Business. "Al was impossible. Oh, I wore him down, but he refused to crack."

Harry eyed her oddly. "You said yourself that some people are resistant to your…methods," he pointed out bemusedly, inserting the appropriate dramatic pause for form's sake.

"He got a triple. Word. Score. Three times in a row," she hissed out in reply, and Harry knew then and there that he'd lost the argument before it'd even really begun.

"Right. Fine. A favor," he agreed sadly.

"Good," Hermione said, regaining some of her composure. "In that case, you can take the kids shopping for Hogwarts next weekend. It's nearly the middle of August, and Merlin knows neither Ron or I have time to do much but work these days." She glared at him balefully—yeah, okay, so he was Ron's boss and in charge his schedule and assignments, but he couldn't show favoritism, right? And if Ron ever actually bothered to do his paperwork on time, Harry wouldn't have to literally chain him to his desk twice a month to make sure it got done.

Though now that he thought about it, he, er, might have forgotten to take the chains off Friday afternoon.

"Well, I can take them with my bunch," Harry said. They hadn't yet gone on their annual back-to-school Diagon run yet, either, mostly because without fail, Potters in Diagon Alley resulted in disaster, kidnappings, and tears. "Hugo's first year, right?"

"It is," Hermione said proudly.

And now he'd have five of them to deal with. Not to mention it was Lily's first year, too, dear Merlin, and she'd finally have a wand of her very own…

It hardly bore thinking about.

"Right," Harry said again, full of a cold dread most Dementors would've been proud to inspire.

Hermione nodded once, sharply, and turned to the Floo. Harry considered making a face at the back of her head, but, well, this was Hermione. She'd_ know_.

She _always _knew.


	5. In Which Harry Lays Down The Law

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine.

I'm oddly fond of this chapter. There's drama! Angst! Shameful sexual urges! Tyranny and oppression and revolution! What's not to love, really?

* * *

Scorpius visited again the next day, and was deeply irritated to discover that Al and James were still at odds. They had come to some sort of Cold War agreement that largely involved glaring at each other and using Lily as their unfortunate intermediary. But there was a distinct lack of raised voices, for once, so he told Harry that he was prepared to let it go.

"For now, at least," he said, sniffing. "But I warn you, if this continues too much longer…I shall be forced to take sides, which of course means I'll be taking Al's side, which of course means James will be in for quite a lot of emotional agony and physical discomfort in the near future." He didn't sound nearly as depressed at the end of the sentence as he had at the start.

"I don't think Al would quite approve," Harry pointed out dryly. Sure, Al and James were far from friendly at the moment, but Albus was a soft touch, really. Both his sons were, when you got right down to it.

"Precisely," Scorpius said, satisfied. "I make James cry like a little whiny baby—don't give me that look, making James cry is easy, you know that, he takes everything so _personally. _Admit it, you dropped him on his head as a child."

"Did not," Harry mumbled, guiltily. He'd never actually _dropped_ James, per se. Just, er, mistook his head for a Bludger once. Easy mistake to make, really, and at least it'd been a Baby's First Beater Bat, all soft and floppy and plush.

"_Anyway_. So I make him cry, crush his spirit beneath my strong and ridiculously attractive heel, Al goes over all noble and protective and comes to his rescue, and the two of them go back to getting along most of the time. And James will once again have learned to fear my wrath. He keeps forgetting about my wrath, it's really quite discouraging. You _did_ drop him on his head, I know it."

Harry didn't bother pointing out that Al might resent the manipulaton—his son was, as far as he could tell, entirely helpless in the face of Scorpius' admittedly masterful puppy-dog eyes and wobbly lower lip. Harry knew from experience that all it took was a single woebegone look to make any and all of the Potter clan melt like messy-haired ice cream in the midsummer sun.

Well, except Ginny. And even she would probably cave if Scorpius added in one of his perfectly crafted bashful, not-quite-guilty smiles.

"Oh," Scorpius added, while James and Albus moved from a not-argument about the state of James' nose and whether or not it was in fact a blemish upon society and England to a not-argument about whose turn it was to use their Mum's state-of-the-art racing broom. "I nearly forgot. Father gave me a message for you."

_("Lily, tell the rat-faced git he got to ride it last time, and if he doesn't get his filthy hands off the broom right __now, I'll break his fingers."_

_"Al, James says you're beautiful and if only you weren't related, he'd make passionate love to you every night.")_

"Go on," Harry said, determinedly ignoring his spawn. He knew for certain that he hadn't been that bad as a teenager. Okay, so yes, he'd yelled a bit, and occasionally thrown things at walls or, uh, people, and made his teachers so angry they threw things at _him_, and yeah, he'd broken laws on occasion and chased after dangerous creatures on a yearly basis and gotten himself nearly killed every other week…

Er.

"He says you should know better than to load up a Malfoy on so much sugar," Scorpius recited, looking slightly embarrassed at the memory of his ice-cream-and-chocolate frog-induced high the previous night. "And that you owe him for the, ah, havoc I wreaked whilst in my altered state, which is by no means my fault mostly because we prefer to blame you rather than take any sort of responsibility for anything ever."

"Points for honesty," Harry said; Scorpius grinned bashfully and a little very-nearly-guiltily, and Harry melted.

_("Lils, tell James he's a frog-faced experiment gone wrong, and that Mum loves me more than him and told me I could use the broom forever and ever, so there."_

_"James, Al says he finds your musculature and razor-sharp cheekbones intriguing and oddly stimulating.")_

No. He definitely hadn't been that bad.

"Father also said to let you know that he deeply resents and blames you for the lifesize Harry Potter automaton I created in the parlor whilst out of my mind on sucrose, as well as the bribes he had to pay the Ministry to make them overlook the underaged magic. That's two favors, he said, which, given that you did help him out with the Snidget Mess two weeks ago, means that he'll call it even if you take me shopping for Hogwarts next weekend."

Harry wondered if migraines were contagious. He kind of hoped so, because he would gladly, _gladly_ lock himself in a room with Draco and Hermione until they were forced to feel his pain. Pitiless sadistic bastards.

"Swell," he muttered. "Up to six, now."

"Rose and Hugo?" Scorpius asked, thoroughly unshocked.

"Got it in one."

"I see no way in which this could possibly end well," Scorpius informed him matter-of-factly. Harry nodded in glum accord.

_("Lilsy-love, tell Al that I will shove, I repeat, shove that broomstick up his arse if he doesn't let me have it right now."_

_"Al, James wants to do slightly violent, incestuous and kinky things to your arse. Unless you do slightly violent and kinky things to his first, in which case your arse is safe for the time being.")_

"Your daughter is disturbed," Scorpius told him, sounding distressingly appreciative.

"At least she's not calling me 'Daddyo' anymore," Harry said, clinging to the silver lining. He loved him some silver lining.

"Give it time," Scorpius counseled sagely. "Give it time."

* * *

Five days later, on a rather overcast Friday afternoon, Harry girded his loins, pocketed his wand, gulped down a calming potion, and gathered his hellish flock in his kitchen, right in front of the Floo.

Ginny watched from the kitchen table, hiding her grin—damn her and her cold, unfeeling soul—behind a mug of coffee. The Prophet was open on the table before her, and when she wasn't blatantly enjoying Harry's pain, she was grumbling about the editing changes made to her piece as she reread it for the eighth time. She'd spent most of the morning annoyed that the Prophet had changed "'really bloody obvious cheating from that talentless scag Bettersworthless' to 'suspected foul play from Chaser Bettersworth'."

He lined the children up side by side, paced the length of the kitchen once or twice, then came to an abrupt halt in front of his frizzy-haired goddaughter.

"Rose. No crusading today," Harry said sharply. The girl opened her mouth to protest, but Harry held up a hand to silence her. "No. The Zoo trip was bad enough. I don't care how sad the tigers looked, you had no business setting them on their handlers."

"No one got hurt," she muttered defiantly.

"Rose, you made the tigers talk."

"Simple spell."

"You made them _demand legal representation. _And you did it with_ my wand_. Do you _know_ the trouble…" He trailed off, took a deep breath, and moved determinedly on. "No crusading. No lawyers. No picketing, no posters, no catchy slogans. No chanting, spell-related or otherwise. And absolutely, I cannot stress this enough, no stealing my wand."

"Fine," she sneered, eyes flashing. "You know, Uncle Harry, if you're not a part of the solution--"

"Do remember that I am an Auror, Rosie. I can and will detain you if necessary, and you know, your parents would probably give me a prize. They _told_ me what you did to those poor garden gnomes."

"It was in the name of justice and freedom!" Rose protested. "I was just trying to help them resist the cruel tyranny of the Wizarding World and its unthinking prejudices! How was I to know they'd attack Uncle George_?_"

"Yes, well, justice and freedom won't make them stop being purple or singing show tunes or turning into cheese," Harry said sternly. "And it won't grow back George's pinky finger, either, and really, doesn't he have enough missing parts?" Rose went sullenly silent. Hugo grinned with malicious younger-sibling glee.

"And you," Harry said, turning on the skinny, bespectacled, bushy-haired boy. "No more writing in text books. I don't care if the questions are badly worded or the information is wrong, d'you hear? I will not pay another two hundred galleons for ruined books just because you cannot restrain yourself."

"Grphlmbrk," Hugo muttered in annoyed acquiescence, ducking his head and shoving his glasses back up his long nose when they started sliding down. Harry smiled tightly.

"Lils. Today is a very special day, the start of your journey as a young witch, etcetera and so forth. The point is, you will be getting your first wand. And if I so much as suspect you of using it at any point during our trip, I will take it away and break it into tiny little peaces which I will then, and don't think I won't, feed to Pigwidgeon Hedwig the Second. Not a word about animal cruelty, Rose, _not a word_." Lily rolled her eyes; Rose scowled. "The wand bit goes for you too, Hugo." Hugo nodded glumly.

Ginny made a suspiciously snort-like sound, but when he glanced over, she looked deeply absorbed in the paper. Spongefully absorbed. Staring at it like it was the most fascinating thing she'd ever seen, in fact, which was a sure sign that she was inwardly cracking the hell up.

He'd guilt-trip her about that later. For now, he had smaller but far more numerous and bloodthirsty fish to fry.

"Albus, Scorpius, James. No going near Knockturn Alley. No loud arguments and no 'accidentally' starting tavern brawls. No tormenting the girls. No stealing Hugo's glasses and not giving them back until he says 'ain't', you know it makes him cry for days. No feeding the girls sugar and setting them loose on your enemies. No eating sugar yourselves, I do not want to deal with vomit today and I know how you get. I do not want to see anything like last summer's Broom Incident, and trust me, neither does anyone else, I think you scarred the entire world for life. Scorpius, James, no selling forgeries of my autograph this time, no, not even to Hufflepuffs. Al, no covering for them when they inevitably do."

"I wouldn't--" Al started, all innocence and hurt feelings, but Harry just gave him a Look (Lily had, just possibly, come by her tendency of practicing facial expressions in the mirror honestly) and the young Slytherin shrugged in silent and utterly faked resignation.

"And all of you, for the very last time, and I really mean it this summer, I don't care if I laughed the last time or the time before that or, you know, every single time you've done it: _no kidnapping any goblins_."

They looked disappointed, Lily and James in particular, so he decided to let them have a bit of good news as well. "Teddy and Victoire will be meeting us at the Leaky Cauldron. Teddy said something about getting his allowance, so go ahead and beg for money. You know his Gran showers him with galleons. Pelts 'em at him, even, when he's being a pain."

His flock brightened considerably--Teddy had absolutely no gumption when it came to withholding money from the kids; a single doe-eyed stare and he (or rather, his money) would be theirs. Scorpius and James were already shooting each other challenging stares, no doubt just itching to see which of them could get the most from Harry's unfortunately generous godson. Of course, Lily would probably get more than the rest combined—Teddy was sadly blind to her obviously evil, black-hearted, self-serving ways, and thought she was just the cutest little thing.

"You're terrible," Ginny muttered when he strode over to drop a kiss on her forehead, but she didn't seem too horribly upset by his admittedly not-quite-textbook parenting methods. Indeed, she tilted her head up so his lips hit hers (well, her chin, but they got it figured out after a second) rather than her hairline.

Six piping voices cried out together in traumatized protest. Harry grinned against Ginny's lips, a grin she happily matched, before he reluctantly pulled away.

"Anything you want on your tombstone?" she asked wryly. She'd absolutely refused to go with him to Diagon this year ("Not again, Harry. Never, never again. Besides, you _know_ if you leave me alone for five minutes with Scorpius, we'll have a dead Malfoy on our hands, you're the only one who can stand the little rat bastard anyway").

On the plus side, she had been the one to wrangle Teddy into accompanying him—the two of them had a Special Bond that came of tormenting Harry for about twenty years, and Gin could get Ted to do pretty much whatever she wanted—so he supposed he shouldn't hold a grudge.

"My tombstone, eh? How about…'Harry Potter. Survived six horcruxes, just to be killed horribly by six teenagers'," he suggested.

Ginny wrinkled her nose. "Eh. It's a bit overly dramatic. Though I suppose it's fitting, as _you're_ a bit overly dramatic."

"Yeah, well, _your face_ is overly dramatic," he replied, the picture of maturity.

"Oh snap," Ginny said blandly, and there were times Harry suspected Lils came by her slang habit naturally, too.

"So I'm dramatic. I was nearly in Slytherin, it's inevitable."

Ginny hummed contemplatively, and Harry could practically see her drawing up a mental chart of all the Slytherins they'd ever known—Severus Snape, sneering melodrama, check. Lucius Malfoy, pimp cane drama, check. Draco Malfoy, ferrety drama, check. Pansy Parkinson, high-pitched drama, check. Blaise Zabini, scorchingly sexy drama, check. Scorpius Malfoy, primadonna drama, check. Al, self-righteous speech-making drama, check.

"Good point," she conceded, lips twitching. "Oh. Wait. You don't think this means Lily will end up in Slytherin, do you?" As one, they glanced at their daughter, who stared back with an innocence so patently fake that it literally hurt.

"I think Lily's blackmail folder and extortion ring means she'll end up in Slytherin," Harry replied fondly, before turning to the troops. Lily beamed at the compliment.

"Right! James, floo powder. Al, you make sure the kids all get through. Scorpius, don't dirty your robes or your father will hang me and then you'll have no one to load you up on sugar and set you loose on Malfoy Manor. Rose, stop telling my houseplants that they're oppressed, for Merlin's sake, they're _plants_."

"Plants have feelings too!"

"If you'd like to find out for yourself whether or not they really do, Rose, just keep on testing my patience."

"Fine. Be an oppressor of the voiceless, the vulnerable, the helplessly leafy; see if I care."

"I will, thanks. Now! Hup two three, and through the fireplace! And it's _Diagon_, James, don't think I don't know you mispronounced it on purpose last time."

"Aww, Dad…"

"Oooh, _burn_," Ginny chortled; Lils pouted at this blatant theft of her thunder. "Haha, get it, the fireplace, the floo, ooh burn? Merlin, I'm good." As one, the children cringed in horror. Harry did a little, too.

* * *

Review?


	6. In Which Diagon Trembles With Fear

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

This chapter should not be nearly as long as it is. It was four pages at first, and then it, like, GREW when I wasn't watching. Honestly, it terrifies me a little.

Don't know what my updating schedule will be like--I'm headed off for parts unknown in a week, and may not have internet access until mid-August.

* * *

In Which Diagon Trembles With Fear

* * *

Against all odds and natural laws of the universe (which dictated, as far as Harry could tell, that Life must inevitably cause him pain and suffering), the day started out fairly decently.

Teddy and Victoire met up with them at the Leaky Cauldron, and Teddy promptly lost most of his funds to his manipulative and shameless pseudo-cousins. "S'not a big deal," he muttered at Harry's sidelong look. "Gran spoils me rotten 'cause Aunt Narcissa spoils Scorpius rotten. I think they've got some sort of competition going on. Bit stupid, really, but I'm not about to complain."

Harry carefully did not mention the I'm-buying-Scorpius-a-Quidditch-team-and-Malfoy's-buying-Al-an-Apothecary-for-completely-altruistic-reasons-that-have-nothing-at-all-to-do-with-showing-each-other-up non-competition he'd had going on with Draco the previous summer. Their wives had eventually forced them to stop, after the Second Great Peacock Massacre. Al and Scorpius had been rather put out. (1)

Lily happily announced that she had nearly enough money to buy a baby thestral, now, 'cause Uncle Hagrid was selling 'em real cheap these days. "Very nice," Victoire approved, while Harry privately resolved to have a quiet talk with Hagrid about what animals most certainly did _not_ constitute proper pets for little girls. "I've always wanted a thestral foal myself, you know. An invisible reptilian flesh-eating flying horse, just imagine," she sighed wistfully.

Lily nodded her fervent agreement, and Teddy stared, face twisted into a very odd grimace that had nothing to do with metamorphmagi powers and everything to do with him being confronted by the Mystery Of The Female Mind™. Harry sympathized.

The shopkeepers in Diagon had taken to assigning lookouts for Weasleys and Potters during the summer, and moments after he and his darlings emerged from the Cauldron, the streets had cleared almost entirely and half the shops in the area had slammed their doors shut, 'Closed Until Further Notice' signs hanging out front.

The rest of the shops, those run by braver and more opportunistic salesmen and saleswomen, stayed defiantly open. Nevertheless, thier employees peeked fearfully out their doors or front windows, wands clutched tightly in white-knuckled fists. They all looked so determined to be prepared this year, ready and waiting for any eventuality. It was really pretty funny, once Harry got over the urge to blast himself into tiny humiliated bits of Wizarding World Savior. "You know, children," he observed a little despairingly, "Even during Voldemort's Reign of Terror, he had to kill people before Diagon Alley emptied out and shops started closing up."

"Gosh," Lily said, delighted. "They fear us, Dad. They really, really fear us." Al and Scorpius edged slowly away from her, but James looked just as caught up in the moment as his sister, a broad grin dimpling his face.

Gringotts rushed them through, not wanting any of them lingering in the bank longer than absolutely necessary. One of the goblins practically threw them out the front doors after they'd been to their vaults. "How rude," Victoire sniffed. Lily and James traded conspiratorial looks that Harry carefully did not let himself see.

"Can we go to Flourish & Blotts first?" Hugo asked hopefully.

"Good a start as any," Harry shrugged, and ushered the kids into the bookstore. Flourish & Blotts had banned the Potter and Weasley families on eleven separate occasions over the past seventeen years, but always relented when, due to Hermione's absence, their profits dropped about three hundred percent.

"Been dreading this since last summer," Harry heard one frazzled employee tell a frightened customer. "S'not so bad when it's just a couple of them, but once every summer they descend like a herd of slavering cannibals, rending flesh from bone, slaking their demonic thirst on retailers' blood, leaving carnage in their wake." The girl paused. "S'good money, though, 'cause there's so blasted many of them, and most of 'em are bookish. And they always pay a bit extra, to make up for the emotional trauma, and they've been covering poor Dougie's therapy bills since the Broom Incident last summer."

At least this time Harry caught Hugo before he defaced more than three texts—though Victoire, damn her, was helping him ("What is this nonsense, the Sticking Charm doesn't work that way at all, hand me a red pen, I'll tell them how it's done!"). He even managed to snag Rose before she could free a few extremely dangerous tomes that were chained to their shelves for _very good reasons_, like them being man-eating and made up of undiluted papery evil.

As always, he added a hefty tip to the bill and considered it hazard pay. Teddy watched him uselessly but pityingly the entire time.

"Thank you for your patronage and I hope you all die gruesome deaths in the very near future," the young man at the front counter said, shell-shocked, as he handed them their bags.

Next stop was Madame Malkin's. Her door was closed firmly, a 'Never Opening Again, Bugger Off You Little Bastards, And You Too Mister Potter, Sir, Though Thanks Again For That Dark Lord Thing' sign upon it. Harry sighed and, for the seventh year running, resorted to emotional blackmail to get her to open back up.

"Madame Malkin," he called in his best world-weary tone, "you remember me from when I was a boy, right? A lost little boy that everyone turned their back on, left to face the darkest of evils alone without adult protection or supervision, while everyone called me insane and an attention-seeking liar…" He went on for some time in this vein, the kids watching with interest (Hugo occasionally flinching when Harry didn't split an infinitive properly or whatever).

"Was your pain entirely unique and original?" Teddy asked in an undertone, grinning wickedly.

Finally, Malkin jerked the door open and scowled out at them. "One day, Mister Potter, that will stop working on me," she informed him curtly, but her eyes swam with remorseful tears and her voice wobbled dangerously. "In, you beasts, in!"

"You love us, really," Lily informed the woman with a grin that said 'adore me _or else_'. Teddy nodded his agreement. Malkin gave a low groan of despair.

Scorpius ran the poor woman ragged with his demands (apparently there was a huge difference between silver trimming and _silver-gray_ trimming—who knew) while Al wanted happy snakes stitched into everything ("Mister Malfoy says that demystification of hurtful stereotypes starts with fashion!"). Lily's requests were near incomprehensible and mostly impossible (Harry was fairly certain Madame Malkin did not, in fact, stock magical bling); and Rose ruthlessly interrogated the assistants to make very sure that at no point had any of the merchandise ever even been within three miles of child laborers, house elves, or underpaid illegal immigrants. James turned a set of robes into a ravenous fluttery hellbeast that tried to eat Hugo.

At the end of it, Malkin was hyperventilating, her assistants were in tears, and Harry tiredly paid nearly twice the actual bill just to make them all stop sniveling.

Victoire sniffed disdainfully. "If you can't take the heat," she told Malkin without the slightest trace of sympathy, "get out of the kitchen and leave the cooking to the professionals." Malkin pulled herself together long enough to glare at the young woman venomously.

Their trip to Ollivander's was shockingly short. The old wandmaker thrust two wands at them the moment they walked through the front door, muttering something about preparing for this moment, he wasn't about to live through another visit like Al and Rose's, there was quite enough gray in his hair enough already, thanks, and if James even looked at anything wrong he'd turn the brat into toad, because he'd had _not_ forgotten about that fire, oh no, not at _all_.

"Took _me_ forever to find the right wand," Harry said suspiciously; Lily poked at her wand curiously. "Al too." James'd only taken about three tries, but each of them had been…memorable. And fiery.

The elderly man glowered back rather fiercely; any and all goodwill he might have felt for Harry after being rescued from Voldemort had long since been used up. "The Diagon Shopkeepers' Defense Association has been keeping a close eye on your…children." The last word was said the way most people might say 'diseased fang-happy rabid dogs from hell'. "I know quite enough about them to match them up with the right wands."

"There's a Diagon Shopkeepers' Defense Association?" Harry asked, startled. He didn't remember hearing about anything like that during the Second War.

Ollivander gazed with unadulterated loathing at James and replied, "Recently established. Three guesses as to why, and the first two, Mister Potter, don't count at all."

Lily and Hugo waved their wands enthusiastically and got satisfactory results (not involving fire, thank Merlin), so Harry shrugged, paid the scowling wandmaker, and shepherded his flock away before James could set the place ablaze for a second time in his short but colorful life.

After much badgering, Harry led his brats to Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes; Scorpius headed straight for the Fanged Frisbee stand, while Harry's kids went for the Fainting Fancies and Puking Pustilles. Harry was mildly alarmed at the evil glee on their little faces, not to mention the malicious sidelong glances Scorpius kept sliding James' way.

Angelina, her Freddie and Roxie in tow, was with her husband in the shop—George had been having some trouble with shoplifters, and Angelina was both eagle-eyed and gifted with painful curses. Judging by the two teenagers trussed up and whimpering in a corner, the perpetrators had been caught quite handily. Angelina stood over the poor bastards, triumphant.

"Wouldn't have thought _you'd_ have trouble catching a couple of kids," Harry told George, who really did have to stop misplacing various body parts (the last official tally had him short an ear, a pinky finger, and most of his left foot).

George winked at Harry. "She's hot when she's angry."

Angelina rolled her eyes and said, "I'm hot _always,_" rather loudly. Several young men in the shop agreed enthusiastically; Angelina preened and George scowled, stomping off to torment his wife's admirers.

"Hey, Harry," Angelina greeted him cheerfully as he moved to her side. She nudged one of the young thieves with her boot. Harry eyed the kids consideringly, pretty certain that this wouldn't turn into Auror business. Not many teenagers could have gotten through the wards and avoided the anti-theft precautions; George would probably offer them jobs. "It's been a while, yeah? Nearly--"

"Two weeks," Harry finished. The Weasleys had very _definite_ ideas about family togetherness.

"Gosh, that long?" Angelina asked, with a hint of sarcasm. They shared a long look of perfect understanding. "It's all that red hair," the dark woman said sheepishly. "Gets to you, addles your brain, and suddenly you can't do without."

"Oh, I know," Harry agreed. "Trust me, I know. I think there's something addictive about the freckles, actually, otherwise I'd have run from this lot at top speed instead of squiring them around Diagon."

Angelina laughed. "We-ell, if it's that bad," she said slowly, teasingly, "Seeing as I've solved George's little problem, how about I take Rose and Hugo for the rest of the day? Hugo and my Freddie are inseparable, after all, and Rose and Roxie…well, you know."

He did indeed know. Rose had adopted little Roxanne as her Chief Inquisitor and Entirely-Consenting-and-Unconstrained-Sycophant many a year ago. Roxie, Harry suspected, was mostly in it for the chaos Rose generated everywhere she went.

"You're a life-saver," he told Angelina fervently.

"Eh," Angelina eh'd. "I owe you one for the Chocolate Frogopolis Incident, yeah?"

George bustled up, then, slinging an arm around his wife's waist and grinning nastily at their captives. "Well, well, well," he crowed. "What have we here?" His victims gurgled in terror.

Harry breathed a little more easily after that, his load considerably lightened. No more of Rose and Scorpius' habitual non-stop feuding. No more of Hugo relentlessly correcting everyone's grammar, his piping voice practically dripping red ink.

"Can we visit Parshi Alley, Dad, can we?" James begged, as their cousins headed off with their Aunt Angelina (who, judging by her glazed eyes and haunted expression, already regretted her offer). "They're supposed to have a new Quidditch shop there, they make custom brooms and uniforms--"

Harry paused, torn between his own desire to see the shop and the nagging feeling that he really shouldn't be rewarding the kids when they'd been nothing but trouble for, well, all their lives. The store was supposed to be really excellent, though—Ron and Draco had both been waxing poetic about it for days, until he pointed out that they were actually in agreement about something; they then hastily insulted the shop at about the same time, realized they were still in agreement, and resorted to hexing each other to restore balance to the universe.

He wavered, considering. Four pairs of wide doe-eyes stared up at him imploringly, and Scorpius went so far as to clasp his hands under his chin, while Lily let her lower lip tremble, just a little, in an expression he'd actually _caught_ her practicing in front of a mirror.

Reluctantly impressed by his daughter's temerity, not to mention deeply amused by Scorpius' HopefulAngelicChoirboyPose™, Harry prevaricated. But when Teddy joined in with the rest, batting his suddenly inch-long lashes exaggeratedly and giving himself honest-to-Merlin Bambi eyes, Harry had to admit defeat. "Fine. I suppose you deserve a bit of a treat for leaving the goblins alone, for once."

Lily and James looked suddenly shifty. Harry decided he really didn't want to know. And if, as they made their way to Parshi Alley, he thought he heard a muffled "Not again, goddammit, blasted Potters, kill them all one day, paint the Alley red with their blood," in Gobbledegook from one of Lily's many shopping bags, well. He _really_ didn't want to know. And he wasn't chuckling under his breath _at all_.

* * *

Teddy's face was pressed right up against the Quidditch shop's window, as were Harry's kids'. Scorpius and Victoire stood a few feet away, both desperately trying to give the impression of being above such ridiculous and childish behavior, but Harry didn't miss the way they both kept glancing greedily at the shiny, speedy-looking broom on display. Scorpius' fingers were actually twitching from suppressed Malfoyesque grabby-handed avarice.

"You know," Harry said dryly, "the shop is actually open. We could go in, and you could stop slobbering all over the glass. Just a thought."

"That's half the fun, though," Teddy protested, not moving an inch. His nose was smushed out, flat as a pancake; sometimes, Harry thought darkly, his godson took the shapeshifter thing a little too far. He wasn't about to forgive the Bambi eyes any time soon. "Wow. Look at how it _gleams_."

"Al, come away from there at once," Scorpius said sulkily. "Merlin only knows how many dirty little brats have drooled all over that window already; you could catch something terrible and disfiguring, and then you'll be ugly and your face will peel off. I couldn't possibly be seen with you in public if your face peels off. I'd have to sit with _Baddock_."

"You sound like Mum," James scoffed, and Scorpius went pink. "You know, if Mum was psycho." Scorpius went pinker.

Harry, sensing imminent disaster, quickly cleared his throat. "Everything's gone well so far," he said. "Let's not ruin that now, all right?"

"You call this 'going well'?" a muffled, grumpy-sounding voice called from Lily's robe bag. "Fourth year running, you bastards, and it's always me. Why, why is it always me?"

Such deep despair in the poor thing's voice. Harry felt rather guilty for having to force back laughter. He'd sworn to Ginny, on pain of banishment from their bed for the forseeable future, not to laugh this time, or even grin. He'd _promised._

"Lily, let the poor goblin go," Harry ordered wearily.

His daughter shrugged and untwisted the top of her bag; a small grey-brown figure emerged and disappeared quickly down the alley, shouting all manner of vicious threats of reprisal as he went. "It's so pretty," Lily murmured, her eyes still fixed on the broom.

"Deranged," Scorpius muttered. Harry felt he probably ought to speak up in his daughter's defense, but really, what could he say—'No, no, kidnapping goblins is perfectly normal behavior for a little girl'?

"Yeah, a bit," he said instead. "'s kind of a requirement, I think, to be a Potter."

"Or a Weasley," Victoire said. "Well, obviously not _me_. But every other Weasley in the family is insane. You can't begin to grasp the emotional trauma I've suffered, growing up surrounded by Weasleys and Potters and, well, Teddy. But I'll make them all pay, I will…"

She wandered over to Teddy, cackling to herself and rubbing her hands together. Teddy looked away from the broom long enough to pat her soothingly on the back.

"I think," Scorpius reflected, "that when I graduate, I'll conduct a study of your family. It will be famous and well-regarded, and I will be invited to all the best parties, and not a single Potter or Weasley will be there because I will have exposed you for the madmen and madwomen you truly are. You will be shunned by all Houses of good standing, and mothers will frighten their children with stories of your misdeeds and lunacy." He paused. "Though I will spare Al, as long as he stops stealing my slippers, because I am a generous and forgiving friend."

"Very kind, I'm sure," Harry said, bemused.

"I expect my soft heart will get me in trouble one day," Scorpius agreed solemnly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go stuff a Fanged Frisbee down the back of James' shirt. It is my destiny," he protested when Harry grabbed his shoulder, holding him firmly in place.

"Yeah, I don't think so," Harry said, lips twitching.

"Really, Harry, you of all people should understand. I am a slave to fate, a slave, I say! The rushing, raging river of historical imperative sweeps me away, and I am helpless to resist its watery grasp."

Harry blinked, shrugged, and let go of Scorpius' robes. It was really the only way to make him stop talking. "I won't pull him off you," he lied, and Scorpius sniffed.

"That's what Al is for, of course. He is, after all, my faithful slipper-stealing friend. But give my regards to Mrs. Potter, should this prove to be my last great hurrah. Well. Painfully mediocre hurrah."

"…sure."

"I'd tell you to snog her for me, but I suspect you'd enjoy it too much, you crazed deviant sex fiend, and I want you to be wracked with grief and guilt over my tragic demise."

"Crazed deviant sex fiend?" Harry repeated, appalled.

"I read Skeeter's articles. I admire her approach to fact-checking and accuracy."

"What approach?" Harry asked, bewildered.

"Precisely. Now, fare thee well, and good fortune, Harry Potter." Scorpius struck a brave pose, then immediately dropped it in favor of some slightly less courageous-looking lurking-in-the-shadows-while-sidling-over-slowly-towards-James.

Had Harry known ahead of time the consequences of Scorpius' raging historical imperative river analogy thing, he'd never have been so sanguine about the prank. But then, when he stopped to think about it, he supposed he was a bit of a slave to fate, too. Just, you know, a little more reluctant about it.

* * *

(1)—For more information on Harry and Draco's Non-Competition and the First Great Peacock Massacre, go scrounge up my fic, Fathers of the Year. Yes, I am this shameless.

Reviews make me smile. Long reviews make me smile for DAYS.


	7. In Which Harry Has A Rude Awakening

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Sorry 'bout the wait--have been on vacation, yay. As a result, this chapter is less polished than it should be, but I am too busy eating my way through Boston to really care. Mmm, mochi.

* * *

Chapter Seven: In Which Harry Has A Rude Awakening

* * *

Harry wasn't too terribly alarmed when Scorpius sneaked up behind James, shoved his Fanged Frisbee down the older boy's shirt, and leaped away, cackling madly. He was more amused than worried when James let out an embarrassingly high-pitched shriek and began dancing spastically around, crying "Get it off me, get it off, dear Merlin, it's headed for the border" while batting uselessly at his lower back.

Victoire, being without question the most responsible person present, summoned the Frisbee away with impressive alacrity. It clung to James' collar in defiance of her summoning spell, actually dragging him back a few feet before it gave up, and Harry suspected he would forever treasure the memory of his eldest son being yanked backwards, arms windmilling wildly and heels dragging along the cobblestone road.

But still, Harry wasn't particularly bothered. He figured the incident would conclude with James punching Scorpius and Al dithering over being caught in the middle, as usual. Scorpius would whine for hours about his delicate skin bruising, James would sulk for approximately ten minutes before forgetting about the entire mess, Al would look at everyone with heartrendingly disappointed eyes, and the fight would be over and done with. That's how his boys _worked._

Except Harry didn't consider just how stressed to the brink James was, by torturous lectures, constant arguments with his little brother, lifelong proximity to Lily, and a morning spent with Rose Weasley. His son was most definitely not in a forgive-and-forget sort of mood. Instead, James went very still, staring wild-eyed at Scorpius, then snapped completely and launched himself at his attacker. Scorpius squeaked (a distinctly ferrety sound, truth be told) and turned to run, but James got him around the middle in a flying tackle.

Harry's reflexes hadn't dulled since the war; if anything, they'd become even sharper, given that these days he actually got _paid_ for being quick with a wand. But the boys were a veritable whirlwind of hormonal aggression, and by the time he got his wand out, they'd already crashed into the semi-open door of a dark, gloomy-looking shop nearby.

"It was bound to happen," Lily said philosophically into the stunned silence (punctuated by furious cries from the fighting boys). Then she shrugged and grinned, letting out a war-whoop and rushing to join in, eyes blazing with the light of battle. "Never fear!" she cried, somehow managing to strike a valiant pose in mid-leap. "SuperMe to the rescue!"

That she seemed more interested in damaging both boys equally than in rescuing either was, apparently, besides the point.

Al followed quickly after his little sister, evading Harry's belated attempt to hold him back. The cunning little bastard had made his shirt collars _detachable._ Next time, Harry promised himself grimly, he'd go for the shoulder.

"Gotta save Scorpius," Al called back apologetically. "Sorry, Dad!"

Harry swore viciously under his breath and tossed aside the sad-looking abandoned collar, which fluttered pathetically to the ground. The seething mass of brawling Potter-Malfoy disappeared further into the shop, and for a split second he thought about just leaving them to it—after all, it'd worked with Ron and Hermione, back in the day. If them taking seven long years to get their acts together could be constituted as 'working'. Er.

"What just happened?" Teddy asked, blinking.

("Ow, Lils, _no pulling hair._"

"Scorpius—oof—is the hair-puller. I bite." The last two words were oddly muffled, as if spoken around a mouthful of robe and skin.

"Bloody hell, Potter, _watch the goods_.")

"Stupid buggering river of historical imperative," Harry groaned, and ran into the shop, a shell-shocked Teddy and resigned Victoire at his heels.

Matters were even worse than he'd anticipated, inside. Oh, the kids were fine—Al was obviously more concerned with separating his friend and brother than fighting himself, and Scorpius and James weren't about to risk hurting him just so they get at one another.

Plus, none of them would ever lay a finger on Lils. Harry liked to think this was due to their innate chivalry, but suspected it probably had more to do with Lily's fuzzy pink binder of blackmaily goodness, not to mention her suspiciously sharp teeth. Sometimes, he had to wonder if she filed them or something. It wasn't natural.

But though his children were more or less all in one piece, the same could not be said for the shop. They'd knocked into a shelf full of ominous-looking artifacts, several of which had crashed to the ground, and the shopkeeper, beginning to recover from his shock, was rapidly working himself into a rage.

"ENOUGH," Harry roared, flicking his wand and forcibly separating the kids. They squealed as they were dragged magically away from each other (even Lily, though she'd probably deny it until her dying day), Scorpius and James glowering at each other resentfully.

He shot a nervous look at the store's owner, wincing at the near-purple flush of anger spreading over the squat man's face. Unpleasant-looking bloke, really, all bristly black eyebrows and quivering jowls.

"Do you know what those little miscreants have done?" he snarled in a deep, raspy voice. He had his wand out, and it was spouting deep red-orange sparks. Harry wisely decided that cautioning the man to keep his temper under control would only end in bloodshed.

"Hey now," Teddy started to say, coming to the kids' defense, but Victoire cleverly shut him up with a smack to the back of his head before he could make matters worse.

"I'm very sorry. Any damaged merchandise," Harry began in his most conciliatory tone (which, okay, was perhaps more confrontational than diplomatic), after sparing his niece an approving nod. He was rather rudely cut off before he could offer reparations, though.

"_Damaged merchandise? _That's not just damaged merchandise, you fool--"

Harry eyes narrowed dangerously, and the shopkeeper amended, "—you self-sacrificing world-saving heroic fool," which he supposed was something of an improvement. "Those are priceless, priceless artifacts. _Dangerous_ priceless artifacts. Just look at the way they shattered the Hand Mirror of Echilc Cifnaf. Just look at the spilled Dementor blood! The Hourglass of Trope! Just look at the ominous multi-colored steam arising from the… Ominous multi-colored steam arising from the… Oh, shit."

The shopkeeper paused, gulped, and Apparated away, and then the shop exploded in light and noise.

If they all survived this, Harry thought muzzily before he succumbed to darkness, he was going to see to it personally that Scorpius was banned for life from Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes. And that James was put on sedatives.

* * *

When Harry returned reluctantly to a fuzzy, dim sort of awareness, he was fairly certain he hadn't been out of it for more than a few minutes. And what with being both an Auror and a father of two rambunctious young wizards and a rambunctious young witch, godfather of another rambunctious young wizard (well, three rambunctious young wizards, if you counted Lorcan and Lysander), and uncle to an entire horde of rambunctious young wizards and witches, he had quite a lot of experience at judging these sorts of things.

He took a deep breath and opened his eyes, wincing as the orangeish light stabbed through his retinas and skewered his brain. Evil light, he decided. Very evil. Give him a few moments and he'd arrest it for—indecent exposure, that was it. Yeah.

He blinked the haze from his eyes, biting back an unmanly whimper. The first thing he saw when the world de-blurred was Severus Snape bent over him, muttering to himself in a testy sort of undertone as he prodded Harry in the side with a bony finger.

That was the precise moment, as Harry would attest to all and sundry for decades to come, when he knew for certain that life hated him and wanted him to be miserable.


	8. In Which Scorpius Is Emotionally Scarred

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine. Woe.

SO. I have this thing where I don't post chapters of this fic unless I have, like, ten more in reserve. But as I was editing this chapter, I had a Brilliant Plot Idea which required that I basically rewrite everything I've got saved. That means I am currently Behind Posting Schedule Liek Whoa, so my updates may be fewer and further between than they have been. Um, whoops?

I would also like to thank everyone who has reviewed this story. I really and truly appreciate the time you take to tell me what you think of my fic, even though it is an extremely silly fic. I heart you all madly.

* * *

CHAPTER EIGHT: In Which Scorpius Is Emotionally Scarred (And No One Cares)

* * *

Scorpius groaned, his entire body throbbing like...like...well, a very pale, very blond, very pointy-faced throbbing thing. He managed to shove himself up onto his knees, wincing as bolts of pain ran through his torso, and glanced around the dimly-lit shop. Teddy and Victoire were sprawled out on the ground, Lily half-under Victoire, and an unconscious James sheltering an equally unconscious Albus.

Panicking silently, his breaths coming quick and sharp, he stared into the gloom, looking for Harry—

Who was awake, thank Merlin, his green eyes glinting in the dull yellow light filtering in through the shop window. Another man, a stranger, was hunched over Harry, prodding him ungently with a wand and muttering under his breath—Scorpius thought he recognized a diagnostic spell or two, but he really couldn't be certain. Unlike the Potters, _he_ wasn't in the habit of injuring himself badly enough to wind up in the hospital wing every other week.

The shopkeeper was gaping at them most unattractively from the front counter. That couldn't be right, though. The shopkeeper had Apparated away after yelling himself hoarse, and there'd been an explosion, Scorpius _knew_ there'd been an explosion, but the room looked perfectly fine. What was going on?

"Bloody hell," Harry groaned, batting at the strange greasy-haired man's wand. "Point that thing somewhere else, will you?"

Scorpius automatically felt a bit better; if Harry was being irritable and long-suffering, then the world couldn't be _too_ out of whack.

The other man—tall, dark, and (judging from what Scorpius could make out in the gloom) far from handsome, sneered and jabbed his wand into Harry's side roughly in response. But any Potter-style Act Of Vengeance™ was forestalled by a quiet groan—Al, Scorpius realized with a surge of profound relief.

"Wha' happened?" his best friend asked groggily, struggling feebly to get out from under James.

"That," the greasy-haired man said coolly, "is something I would quite like to know as well."

"You all right?" Scorpius asked Al, watching him intently.

"Yeah," Albus muttered, grunting as he finally managed to escape his brother's (not inconsiderable) dead weight. "Yeah, I'm good." He collapsed onto his back and stayed there; Scorpius shuddered. He did not have the greatest confidence in the cleanliness of the shop floor. But then, Al had never had a problem with getting a bit dirty, much to Scorpius' eternal despair. Father said it was an inevitable byproduct of Al's Weasley heritage and that allowances must be made.

"Sit up, who knows what could be on that floor, I bet you're lying in dried hag spittle or something. And I'm in terrible pain." Al pulled a face, half concern and half exasperation, and didn't move at all.

"Terrible pain, huh?" Al said dryly.

"I think," Scorpius revealed, impressed by his own astonishing forbearance, "that I've got a cobweb in my hair."

To his great shock, Al just shook his head and snorted. And James opened one eye narrowly, croaking, "You great bloody girl. 'I've got a cobweb in my hair! Oh, the humanity!'"

Out of the corner of his eye, Scorpius saw Harry turn away, shoulders shaking; clearly, Scorpius surmised, he was weeping in pain at his son's heartlessness and utter dearth of wit.

"Girls don't sound like that, you noob," Lily grumbled, pulling away from Victoire. She rose unsteadily to her knees, wobbled, and wisely contented herself with sitting heavily on the ground. Excellent judge of character, that girl, Scorpius thought approvingly.

GreaseFace opened his mouth, but a groan from Teddy cut him off before he could even begin to speak. Scorpius got a brief eyeful of yellowed teeth and shuddered, full of sympathy for Harry, who was probably close enough to that mouth to smell Greasy's breath. He briefly considered trying to stage some sort of rescue, but that would probably require being in fairly close proximity to GreasyFace and his Mouth of Doom at some point, and, well, _ew_.

"Vic," Teddy muttered, his muffled words barely audible, "why are there shrill, piping voices all around? Get rid of them, please." Scorpius sniffed, deeply offended—everyone knew Malfoys had deep, manly voices, resonant with testosterone and steely resolve.

"My voice is not shrill or piping," James protested immediately, in a forcedly deep tone that sounded bizarrely like that tiny little Darth Vader bloke Rose's mum kept trapped in that tiny 'telly-vision' box in the living room.

"Not you," Teddy said blearily, eyes still screwed tightly shut, and waved halfheartedly at Lily, then at Scorpius. "There. And over there."

"How dare you!" Scorpius cried, not at all shrilly.

"Oh Merlin, shut him _up_," Scorpius' traitorous cousin begged.

"I'm too busy with my hangover," Victoire said testily, rolling slowly away from her boyfriend. "Great Merlin, what'd we drink last night? What did we _do_ last night? Why's the bed so hard? And why, if we did get drunk, are we still clothed?"

"More importantly, why are there piping voices?" Teddy asked doggedly. Scorpius plotted his painful demise.

"Everyone all right?" Harry interrupted, and at the sound of his voice, his kids and Teddy and Victoire immediately relaxed a bit. Scorpius remained on edge, though—he didn't miss the looks Harry kept shooting GreaseFace, all narrow-eyed and calculating and kind of desperate.

A chorus of hesitant '_yeah_'s and '_we're good_'s rang out, in beautiful counterpoint to Scorpius' irritated (but not at all piping or shrill), "Agony! Agony, I say. My every muscle quivers with the force of my torment. And I've got a cobweb in my hair. It won't come out."

"Excellent," Harry said absently, darting yet another look Greasy's way. Scorpius, affronted, looked to Al for comfort—but Al was brushing a bit of dust off one sleeve, not paying even the slightest attention to his supposed best friend. Bastard.

"Does no one care about my pain?" Scorpius demanded loudly, wounded to the very core by Harry's lack of regard for his emotionally scarring cobweb situation. Did they not know it was impolite to ignore a Malfoy? Malfoys ignored other people. That was how the world worked.

"No. Get used to it," Teddy said, not unkindly. He and Victoire had finally managed to sit up, though they were leaning heavily on each other. Victoire cooed lovingly over her boyfriend, wiping a smeer of dust off his cheek; Scorpius' emotional scarring got deeper and more permanent. "S'part of being a teenager, you know. No one cares if your soul bleeds poison or if your nose is clogged with the scent of rotting black roses."

"Oh," Scorpius said uncertainly. He wondered vaguely why anyone would sniff dead roses.

"Even," Teddy went on bitterly, "if your pain is entirely unique and original and--"

"'But _Harry_,'" Harry mocked, "'You can't possibly understand what it's like, being an angst-ridden orphan with messy hair and a stressful home-life and a hopeless crush on a Ravenclaw and a notorious godfather and two left feet, sometimes literally!'"

"Yeah, well, I hadn't read your biography at that point, okay?" Teddy grumbled rebelliously. Victoire patted him on the shoulder, but Scorpius was sure he saw her lips twitching into a smile.

"You've had two literal left feet?" James asked Harry. Scorpius eyed Harry curiously, forgetting momentarily about his unbearable agony, though not about the cobweb. Never about the cobweb.

"Once, yeah," Harry said darkly, eyes going distant and cold. "But I made George pay, I did."

"_Fascinating_ as this all is," GreaseFace sneered, his voice pitched low but cutting easily across the flow of inconsequential post-panic chatter, "I'm afraid I really must insist on an explanation of who you are, how you came to be here, and why that girl had a goblin in her bag."

Harry turned pained eyes on Lily. "Explain."

"Well, I did let _one_ go, Daddyo. And what'choo on about, 'had'?" she demanded, turning to stare at the black-robed, hook-nosed menace-to-hygiene-everywhere who was _still_, disturbingly, hunched over Harry. Scorpius hoped this wasn't yet another case of star-struck hero-worshiping obsessive-stalker-love.

He'd seen it happen before, someone catching sight of Harry or Mrs. Potter and completely losing their sanity over them. What with the saving-the-world-thing and the retired-Quidditch-star-thing, respectively, it wasn't really all that uncommon a reaction. And Mrs. Potter, at least, knew how to deal with the obsessive adoration of the crazed masses. Harry just hexed people and swore a lot, but Mrs. Potter had her stalkers fetch her sandwiches and buy her expensive jewelry.

There were times when Scorpius quite admired her.

"The goblin escaped confinement while you were all unconscious," GreaseFace said coolly, one of his eyes starting to twitch. Not stalker-love, then, Scorpius thought, rather relieved. More like Potter-induced homicidal urges, which were just as common and considerably less creepy.

"And you didn't stop it?" Lily whined, pouting. Greasy stared.

"Look," Harry spoke up with a deliberate calm that said he was only clinging to sanity by a thin, fraying thread and would everyone shut up before that thread snapped, _please_, "Can we forget the goblin?" Wisely, he didn't give anyone time to respond. "Now, I'm not entirely sure what's going on. We were in the shop, the keeper was yelling at us because the kids'd knocked down some mirror or something, there was some Multicolored Ominous Smoke. And then we were all on the floor and you were poking me with your wand."

Scorpius caught Al's eye. As they were boys and thirteen years old, it was their job--nay, their sworn _duty_--to snicker. Harry flushed and rolled his eyes.

"That's forward, that is," James said, frowning at the strange dark hook-nosed man. "You could've at least bought him dinner first, you know, before getting to the wand-poking. Besides, he's already married to my mum, comes of being my dad and all."

"You sound even more idiotic than usual," Scorpius observed. "Hmm. Once again, a Potter does the impossible."

"Don't provoke him," Al said severely, his smile fading a bit. "None of this would've happened if you hadn't provoked him."

Scorpius waved a hand dismissively. "I think it was him tackling me through a door and smashing me into a shelf that led to our current dilemma, myself. But maybe that's just me."

"Pretty sure it is," James said, scowling.

"Enough," Harry said sharply, and Scorpius could tell he really meant it this time, in a deadly serious 'shut up or I'll set Hermione on you, you little pipsqueak bastards' sort of way.

"You weren't in the shop," the keeper said belligerently, arms folded over his considerable middle. Scorpius blinked—he'd rather forgotten the shopkeeper was still there. "I was helpin' out a customer and then there was a kind of phwipt noise-"

"Phwipt?" Scorpius repeated, eyebrow raised. James sniggered, then scowled at Scorpius resentfully for making him laugh.

"Yeah, phwipt," the portly man grunted. "Wanna make somethin' of it, Blondie?"

Scorpius stared; he was certain he could feel the earth beneath him tremble as generations of Malfoys rolled and thrashed in their graves. "_Blondie?_" he screeched, barely noticing as Teddy whimpered and covered his ears. "You _cretin_, how dare you_—_"

"Scorpius, don't taunt the angry man. Angry Man, don't insult or threaten my charges," Harry said wearily, massaging his temples. Scorpius winced and fell silent—the dreaded temple-rub was the first sign of an impending Harry Potter meltdown, which were always epic in proportion and generally ended in tears and spilled blood. "Please."

The shopkeeper sneered. Scorpius sneered. GreaseFace hadn't stopped sneering for the last ten minutes, but now turned it up a few notches, getting into the spirit of things. James, evidently feeling left out, shrugged and sneered as well. It was a veritable sneerfest.

Harry simply shot them all a Look (Scorpius was impressed, it reached at least a 9.8 on the Granger-Percy Disapproval Scale) that wiped the sneers off all their faces. Even GreaseFace's faltered briefly, before coming back better than ever.

"There was a phwipt noise," the shopkeeper said stubbornly, shooting Scorpius a look that just dared him to make something of it, "and you all just showed up. Like, one second you wasn't there, and then you was."

"Hugo would hate you so very, very much," Scorpius informed the man pleasantly. "And I'm sure you didn't sound nearly as appallingly uneducated before the explosion. Can concussions knock the grammar right out of you?"

"Probably," Al said thoughtfully, while the shopkeeper fairly vibrated with rage. "I mean, when you've had a knock to the head, you're probably not overly concerned about split infinitives, you know?"

"Shopkeeper Bilge is quite accurate in his description of events," GreaseFace said, eye twitching a little more pronouncedly. "Questionable sound effects aside."

Red-faced, Bilge--what an unfortunate name, thought Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy scornfully--turned on the other man. "'Ere now, you great greasy git-"

"Shabby alliteration," Lily said disapprovingly. "Uncle_ Ron_ could do better." For some reason, Harry coughed and looked away, red-faced. "And really, 'phwipt'?"

"It _was_ a phwipt, you little bastards! A phwipt, y'hear me?" And with that, the shopkeeper loudly had a nervous breakdown.

They all watched him curiously to see if he'd do anything interesting—Percy had the most entertaining hysterics ever, and Aunt Angelina's weren't bad, either, if considerably less frequent—but mostly he just railed incoherently. "Huh," James said, head cocked to the side. "Kinda disappointing. He's not even throwing any hexes around."

"A sob or two would be choice," Al agreed. "I'll have to give him a four out of ten, I'm afraid."

"And that's being generous," James added. He shook his head sadly at the shopkeeper, who had begun rocking gently back and forth in place.

"How tiresome," Victoire said, and stunned the man with a lazy flick of her wand. Something in her smile made Scorpius' heart beat a little quicker, though even he wasn't certain whether it was out of fear or adulation.

"Now that he's out of the way," GreaseFace said rather hoarsely, once they'd all subtly scooted away from Victoire (though Teddy edged nearer, the besotted sod), "I shall get to the bottom of this."

"I'll _bet_ you want to get to the bottom," James said distrustfully; he clearly hadn't forgotten about the wand-prodding Greasy had inflicted upon his poor semi-conscious father.

Scorpius was mildly impressed; for a moment there, the older boy actually looked a bit threatening. Then James giggled at his own innuendo, and lived down to Scorpius' expectations once again. "Get to the bottom, heh, get it? Get it?"

An appalled silence fell over the group, broken only by James' chortling. "I don't suppose you could stun _him_—" GreaseFace began with a glance at Victoire, but she was already shaking her head, her wand pocketed once more.

"He's my cousin," she said ruefully. "I find subtler ways of dealing with family."

"Unfortunate," GreaseFace said; Harry looked like he silently agreed. "Moving on, then. I want names. Now. And I will be able to tell if you lie," Greasy added ominously.

"Jimmy John. Walter Figgins. Hortense Balistrade Fidget the Third," James offered, then shrank back as his father and GreaseFace turned to glare at him in horrible tandem. "You said you wanted names," he said a bit sulkily. "Never said they had to be _ours_."

Scorpius rather hoped that when Greasy inevitably snapped, James would be directly in the line of fire.

"_Names_," GreaseFace repeated, unamused.

"I," Scorpius announced with a slight flourish that he couldn't quite pull off, given that he was still sitting on the ground, "am Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy." He ignored Teddy and James' snickers with well-bred dignity.

"Impossible," GreaseFace said immediately, upper lip curling to briefly reveal those revoltingly yellowed teeth. Scorpius suppressed a shudder. Also, vomit. "The last Scorpius Malfoy died in disgrace over three centuries ago; the name's been retired."

"Yes, well," Scorpius said, picking an invisible and possibly nonexistent bit of lint off his robes, just to show his utter disregard for anything GreaseFace might say or do or think. "Consider it recalled to active duty."

"I would know if a Scorpius Malfoy existed," GreaseFace snapped.

"Are you calling me a liar?" Scorpius asked, but found he couldn't duplicate the exact tone of soft menace he'd occasionally heard his father employ, generally when the servants didn't prepare the raspberry tarts to his exacting standards.

"Spare me from teenaged bravado," GreaseFace said irritably.

"Yeah, well, spare me from sour-faced oily-skinned Cyrano-nosed wankers with sticks up their arses," Scorpius retorted.

GreaseFace's glare outclassed any Scorpius had ever before faced, except maybe Molly Weasley's. Scorpius gulped.

"Not that it's a bad look," he said hastily, feeling distinctly shaky. "Very distinctive. Greasy hair, big nose. A flashy new fashion for a fresh new year."

For some inexplicable reason, this did not placate the man. "Scorpius," Harry said kindly, "shut up."

"And you are?" GreaseFace hissed, turning his sneer and glare (both powered to maximum) on Harry, who simply raised an eyebrow in response.

Scorpius gazed at Harry, deeply impressed by his—what did Lily call it? His mellow. Harry's was a mellow that refused to be harshed. An unharshable mellow, that's what Harry had. And that? Was just chill.

* * *

Review plz?


	9. In Which Harry Explains It All

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

So, you know how I said I would be taking longer between chapters? APPARENTLY NOT. Next chapter WILL be delayed, due to that going-back-to-college-in-a-week thing, but hey. At least you get this one?

ALSO: I've got a good start on the rewrite, and I can actually integrate a lot of what I had written already into the new stuff, so that's going well. Woot.

* * *

CHAPTER NINE: In Which Harry Explains It All

* * *

There was something reassuringly familiar about being faced with Snape's death glare, even after nearly twenty years of only ever seeing it in his nightmares.

Harry had mentioned the nightmares to Neville once, and a week later an owl arrived clutching a pamphlet for a Snape-Induced-Post-Traumatic-Stress support group. Harry's nightmares had been more about Snape dying and less about Snape coming back from the dead to yell at him for being a dunderhead, but he'd shown up at one of the meetings anyway, out of morbid curiosity.

He'd stayed for about twenty minutes before he made his escape. If he wanted to hang around with dozens of emotionally-scarred, drunken, weepy former Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors, he'd go out drinking with his Aurors. But he remembered one man saying, in between shots; "Just remember, we were kids; in reality, he can't have been _that_ scary-looking, y'know?"

Harry was bizarrely pleased to see that Snape really was just that menacing, that it had nothing to do with being a kid or an adult. He almost smiled, and would have, if he weren't so utterly confused.

So Snape didn't recognize him at all, not even in a squinty-eyed 'Huh, you look vaguely like someone I once hated with a burning passion' sort of way. Harry wasn't sure if that cleared matters up a bit, or just made them all the more befuddling.

For a moment, he entertained the possibility that this was some kind of bad joke—Snape was dead and had been for decades, there could be no question of that, and seeing him alive and well, sneering and walking and sneering and talking and sneering…it wasn't possible. The dead couldn't come back, not like that, no matter how much time you spent wishing they would.

Unless you had a resurrection stone, of course, or got into an unlikely dueling incident involving brother wands. Er.

But…no, Harry was positive that this was real. No impersonator or spell could conjure up that glare, that scowl, that _nose_. Harry was even more convinced by the simple fact that, well, Snape didn't really look like himself, not like the man Harry'd watched die. This Snape was…older. There were a few streaks of gray in his hair; deep lines had settled heavily into place around his mouth and eyes, and he had a hint of that unfortunate jowliness which inevitably arrives with age.

Snape was obviously nearing the top of the hill, and he had the kind of worn, tired, bitter look to him that said he'd struggled with every step up it. Harry knew the feeling.

No, this was really Snape, in all his disgruntled glory. Harry just had to figure out how that was possible.

"You can probably guess I'm a Potter," he said finally, and Snape's Curled Lip Of Unquenchable And Undying Hatred was affirmation enough.

"The thought had occurred to me," Snape agreed, with a Malfoy-sized wealth of disdain. "You have that unfortunate look about you." He said this in roughly the same way most people might say, oh, 'You have that unfortunate incontinent-elderly-dog stench about you'. Harry fought down the urge to stick his tongue out. "Yet the question remains, who _are _you? I have never heard of any mystery members of your benighted clan."

"Wouldn't be much of a mystery, if they did," James pointed out reasonably enough, and shrank back as the Glare was turned, briefly, in his direction. Again. Fitting, Harry supposed, that Severus Snape and the newest James Potter were already at odds.

"I'm Harry Potter," he said, coming to his son's rescue and reclaiming Snape's attention. James shot him a grateful look, dramatically wiping beads of nonexistent sweat from his forehead. "Er. Harry James Potter."

Snape's lip curled up a little more, eyes dark with distrust. "Harry Potter died well over thirty years ago. Try again."

_Ah. _Harry thought he might have the very beginnings of an idea—or rather, an explanation. And Snape did so like explanations. Mostly, he liked tearing them into shreds while insulting everyone around him, but still.

"I assure you, I'm Harry Potter, really and truly," he said easily, his mind whirring away with possibilities and theories. "And that boy really is Scorpius Malfoy, just as he claims." He took a deep breath and added, "I think we're from a different reality."

Given the dramatic nature of that little revelation, Harry was rather disappointed by the response it got. "Oh, I get it. You've finally lost your mind," Teddy said with a sigh.

"Why on earth would you think that?" Scorpius demanded, wrinkling his nose.

"Do you take me for a total fool?" Snape snarled, rolling his wand very pointedly between his thumb and forefinger. Harry wondered if he'd forgotten how bony the man's fingers were, or if he'd just never noticed.

"Really, Dad, you think we're in another…what, another dimension or something? Just because of a few bangs and some funny-colored smoke and Crazy Phwipt Man's shoddy memory?" Al asked dubiously.

"Makes sense to me," James said with a shrug, which was basically the final nail in the coffin of Harry's brilliant theory.

Harry realized with a start that the kids had no idea who Snape was, that they'd been talking to a dead man for several minutes now. (Well, not really talking _to_ so much as talking over or insulting or being insulted by. But that was just semantics.)

"Children," Harry said, still a little annoyed at having his Moment of Unveiling The Shocking Truth so cruelly stomped all over, "This is Severus Snape. _The_ Severus Snape. I know you've all seen pictures at some point. Just take another look, all right?"

"Do we have to?" Lily asked, mildly repulsed, but a stern look soon set her straight.

Obediently, the kids studied Snape, who glared back uneasily. James tilted his head, narrowed his eyes, and stroked his chin in some sort of Cunning-Eagle-Eyed-Detective pose, while Victoire was clearly running through some sort of mental checklist (lanky hair, check; hooked nose, check; disgruntled glower, check; rows of buttons that outnumber the stars on clear night, check).

All in all, they looked like a bunch of weirdos in an art gallery, checking out the least attractive statue ever sculpted.

Snape folded his arms over his chest, more sour-faced than ever. "_If_ you're all quite finished…"

"Huh," said Teddy.

"Hmm," Victoire decided.

"Funky," Lily said.

"Wow," Albus Severus breathed, agog.

"Shouldn't he be rotting and smelly?" Scorpius asked. He sniffed, and added, "Hmm. Well, shouldn't he be rotting?" Snape's eye twitched violently.

"Dad just _told_ us why he's not all, you know, gross," James said, rolling his eyes. "Uh. Comparatively speaking." Snape turned towards the young idiot, an unpleasant, sharp little smile on his face. Before he could do anything, though, Victoire cleared her throat pointedly and held up her wand.

"Sorry," she said, "but he _is_ family." Snape eyed her for a long moment, then nodded curtly and contented himself with a dark glare at James, who emitted something that sounded shamefully like an 'eep'.

Harry closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. At this rate, James would be dead by nightfall.

"So," Lily said slowly, with a wide, toothy grin. "We're in an alternate universe. This is, like…well, it's _totes_ _rad_."

"Is that French?" Snape asked suspiciously.

Victoire flinched violently, as if she'd been struck, and then unleashed upon the Potions Master a deadly glower with the force of a thousand furious French ancestors behind it. Her fingers tightened around the handle of her wand rather threateningly.

Scorpius choked out a bizarre and unMalfoyish snort-giggle, Lily stared in solemn disbelief, and Teddy turned away, shoulders shaking.

Unfortunately, transdimensional disaster or not (and this was bound to go down in the family history as the Alternate-Reality-Caper-of-'19), some things just never changed. Like, for instance, the migraine eternally lurking behind Harry's right eye, or—in this case—James' habit of saying the exact worst thing possible at the exact worst moment possible.

"Huh. I thought you were supposed to be smart," the boy muttered. Harry cringed, but by some amazing stroke of luck and chance, Snape didn't seem to have heard his son. Nevertheless, Harry sent him a very definite You-Are-So-Grounded-It-_Hurts_ Look, and James pouted.

"'Totes rad' is, I assure you, very definitely not French," Victoire said frostily, veritable icicles hanging from each word. _Sharp_ icicles. Sharp icicles _dripping blood._

"It's German," Teddy added helpfully.

"I hate everything," Harry sighed.

"Excellent," Snape replied dourly. "That makes two of us."

* * *

Yes. Yes, this is a parallel universe fic. SHUT UP STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT.


	10. In Which Snape Is Irritated, For A Chang

Disclaimer: I own nothing. NOTHING.

Okay. So. Two apologies: first, that I haven't gotten review replies out yet, and probably won't for a bit. That includes responses to PMs people've sent. I fail like a failing thing. Second: this took way longer to get out than it should have, but settling back in at college has sucked, and there was a mix-up with the internet that left me and my housemates bereft of the interwebs for, like, weeks, zomg. I KNOW, WOT HORRORS I HAVE FACED, RIGHT?

Also, this chapter is kind of lamecakes, possibly the most lamecakes chapter of all. But necessary nonetheless, woe.

* * *

CHAPTER TEN: In Which Snape Is Irritated, For A Change

* * *

"I don't trust 'em," Mad-Eye Moody growled, a statement made redundant by the very identity of its speaker. "SPIES."

"I'm shocked by your completely uncharacteristic show of caution," Severus said disinterestedly. He had locked the intruders up in the shop's storage room, then called in the Order—a decision he was beginning to regret.

Deeply.

It was a sad day when a probable Death Eater masquerading as a Potter from another dimension proved to be less annoying than one's allies. The Most-Likely-Not-Really Harry Potter had at least been halfway reasonable, agreeing to the imprisonment on the condition that he and the others were allowed to retain their wands. Not, Severus admitted to himself somewhat reluctantly, that he could really have refused the request, given that they did outnumber him seven to one. Severus was not foolish enough to believe that because most of his captives appeared to be children, they would also be helpless. And Fake Potter had known it, too, the little bastard, known he could demand pretty much anything and get his way.

"I don't trust you, either, Snape," Moody snapped, ever the picture of courtesy. The unfortunately disfigured picture. "SPY!"

Good to know decades of loyal service hadn't put a dent in Moody's suspicions, Severus thought sourly. Paranoid old arse.

"Yes, yes," Minerva said testily, shooting Severus a reprimanding 'don't provoke the unhinged ex-Auror' look, which he ignored with practiced ease. She also shot him an elbow to the ribs and a hissed, "Don't goad him, you great bat," which he had rather more difficulty ignoring. Scowling, he silently vowed vengeance. A few dead bats in her pillowcase would be a suitable reprisal.

"This makes no sense though," Know-It-All Granger said with a puzzled frown. It looked rather painful—the woman wore her hair in a bun so severe that Severus continually wondered how her face still had the slack required for forming expressions. He suspected magic was involved, somehow, perhaps a spell passed on from Minerva to her likeliest young proteges. "Surely Death Eaters would have come up with a, well, a less implausible story? If they truly wanted us to believe them, I mean. Polyjuice would have worn off by now, and Alastor would've been able to see through any glamors or, ah, more conventional disguises. And their interactions…"

Severus had turned the wall between them and the intruders invisible (at least, invisible from the Order's side), and he, Granger, Moody, and Minerva had spent nearly two hours staring at the most boring set of captured possible-spies in history.

Inside the makeshift prison, the pink-haired young woman was cuddling quite nauseatingly with the turquoise-haired young man (Severus shuddered at the thought of their inevitable freckled, violet-haired offspring), while Fake Potter had forcibly separated the younger children after an impromptu game of gobstones degenerated into a brawl more vicious than even the Hog's Head could boast.

Severus had been reluctantly impressed by the little red-haired fiend-beast from hell—she did not, he'd noticed with a wince, spare either nails nor teeth. Nor did he miss the bizarrely proud (if somewhat exasperated) way Fake Potter had looked at her after removing the oldest boy's shin from her jaws. It had been undeniably fatherly.

Death Eaters just weren't that good at acting, nor so ingenious at disguising themselves.

"Not polyjuice, definitely not glamors, and the odds of having seven metamorphmagi showing up all at once are…miniscule, to say the least," Minerva said with a heavy sigh, echoing Severus' own musings. "I suppose there's really nothing for it but to question one of them. An all-out Veritaserum interrogation."

"Interrogation?" Mad-Eye grunted, perking up like a battered, angry, paranoid puppy. "SPIES. _CONSTANT VIGILANCE!_"

"There, there," Granger said absently, patting the grizzled old bastard lightly on the shoulder. "Calming thoughts, deep breaths, etcetera."

"Spies," Moody said again, a little forlornly. "Even just one spy. It's been so long…"

Severus caught Minerva's eye. It proved to be a move considerably more difficult than anticipated, as they suffered an awkward moment where he strayed too far to the nose area when she moved to catch _his_ eye, and then they both overcompensated in the opposite directions until they were staring over each others' shoulders. By the time they actually locked gazes, Minerva's cheeks had gone pink with embarrassment, and Severus was feeling uncomfortably discomfited himself.

"I think," Minerva muttered, after they came to a hasty and silent agreement to never acknowledge the eye fiasco, "that perhaps someone besides Alastor should be in charge of the questioning." She spoke softly enough that Moody, gazing yearningly in on the prisoners, did not hear—unsurprising, as Granger was nattering in his ear about theories of transdimensional travel and the effects of magic on the fabric of space/time.

"You are, as ever, the very soul of…now, what is the word the children use so eloquently? Ah, yes—'dur'," Severus said.

Minerva scowled.

* * *

Fake Potter was in charge of his little ragtag group, that much was clear to even to Severus' dimmer colleagues (and to his eternal helpless frustration, he worked with some spectacularly idiotic people). World-saving, despite tradition, really was best left to those with synapses capable of firing more than once a month.

The Order, reasonably enough, decided that the best choice for interrogation would be Fake Potter, the intruders' obvious leader. Severus, reasonably enough, told the Order that they were all dunderheads.

"You have something to say?" Black demanded belligerently.

"Unlike you," Severus replied, "I do not talk merely to hear myself. _Yes_, you moronic mutt, I have something to say."

And then something astonishing happened, something unforgettable. For once, the Order actually listened to him when he made an obviously intelligent suggestion, and then, miraculously, _did not go ahead and do something stupid anyway_. The foundations of Severus' very world were rocked. Rocked, as if by a hurricane.

"The man is too calm," Severus explained, a touch impatiently. "He won't give us anything but what he wants to give us. The children, though—if they are in fact children and not adults in disguise or, as seems considerably more likely, ravenous beasts spawned by the fiery depths of hell—are considerably less composed."

"Not the girl," Hestia Jones said immediately, shuddering. There was a moment of silence as they recalled, with collective horror, what the girl had done to the one of the boys, the one who looked to be about fifteen years old, when he'd tugged playfully on a lock of her hair.

Evidently, she did not deal well with stress, nor take kindly to teasing.

"I suggest we leave the Fake Malfoy, as well," Severus said. This, of course, prompted loud disagreement from every corner of the room, once again proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was clearly the only person present with a working brain.

Well. Not the _only_ one.

"He's right," Lily Potter backed him up briskly. "If this is actually a plot, they'll be expecting us to go for the Fake Malfoy or for—for the Fake Potter."

Severus winced—he and Lily had never quite revived their friendship of old, but he didn't enjoy seeing her in pain, and that's precisely what this situation was causing her. She had lost her own Harry, after all, as a baby. To have another version of him turn up…he could hardly imagine what she must be thinking or feeling.

Severus cheerfully resolved to do quite a large number of extremely nasty things to Fake Potter, once he'd been revealed inarguably as fake. He had _plans_. Oh yes.

"Who, then?" James Potter snapped, glowering at him over the table—the petty little bastard was annoyed, no doubt, that his wife had agreed with him rather than going along with the rest of the mindless dribbling mob. Further proof that she'd married beneath her.

Severus sneered back a sneer even more sneerful than those he normally sneered. It was like a sneer sundae with hot sneerish topping and tiny sneer sprinkles and a few scattered sneer nuts on top.

"The boy—not the one with the, ah, colorful dress sense and hair, but the oldest of the teenagers," Lupin said hastily, darting a long-suffering glance between Black, Potter, and Severus himself. "He's obviously nervous about the situation, and he's suffered, uh, some trauma recently--"

Again, the collective wince at the memory of that devil-girl, that horrible, vicious, monster-thing and her sharp, sharp teeth.

"Agreed," James said quickly.

Severus stewed angrily—now he either had to remain silent or actually concede that Potter had made a sensible decision. That _bastard_. And he had even had an entire tirade in mind, a torrent of venom about Lupin's parentage, appearance, choice of friends, lack of hygiene, and questionable chin, that eventually led up to a grudging and faux-amazed appraisal of the wolf's ability to, despite everything, very occasionally hit upon a good idea. No doubt due mostly to the law of averages.

It would have been such a good speech, the sort of scathing denunciation he woke up smiling just from dreaming about. Leave it to a Potter to ruin everything.


	11. In Which Teddy Does Not Have Babies

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Except 'All My Aurors'.

Uh. So. This chapter is another one where I sat down to do a few minor edits, and then two hours later, I realize I've doubled the word count and tripled the number of pointless tangents. ENJOY.

* * *

CHAPTER ELEVEN: In Which Teddy Does Not Have Babies

* * *

"Let me get this straight," Harry said coldly. "You want to question my son, _out of my sight_, without telling me who will be doing the questioning, what methods you'll be using to get information, or why we're even being held when we've done nothing but overturn a few shelves and save a shopkeeper from his own rising blood pressure."

"That sums it up nicely," Snape agreed.

Harry sighed, not nearly as surprised as he should have been. Leave it to the Order to assume he'd trust them with one of his children, just because they were self-proclaimed war heroes.

Like the good guys never got out of hand in interrogation. _Please. _That delusion had faded like snowflakes in the pits of hell the first time he'd seen Aurors Su Li and Malcolm Baddock team up to fight crime. The only reason he hadn't fired them for cruel and excessive use of logic and sarcasm (a truly deadly combination to most wizards and witches) was because he had to keep an eye on the progress of their plot to overthrow Kingsley and instate a New World Order, wherein the clever reigned over the dim. Last he'd heard, they were planning on making Hermione their Supreme Leader.

Of course, Su Li and Baddock never actually get around to enacting their Glorious Revolution, what with their endless disagreements about logistics and methodologies and precedent (not to mention the distracting nature of their mutual and epic Unresolved Sexual Tension). But their partnership provided endless entertainment to the rest of Ministry: Kingsley used the conspiracy as a pretense to have their every move watched and then Pensieved, and all the Department Heads and long-term employees gathered in the Ministry banquet room every Monday night to review the best moments of the previous week. Ron called it their 'The Bold and the Brainy' night; Hermione referred to it as 'Days of Their Lives'. Harry, personally, thought 'All My Aurors' sounded a little classier.

Ginny thought they were hard workers who put in loads of overtime because they cared about the state of the government and the lives of regular wizards and witches, or, alternately, that they were out getting drunk and defacing statues of former Ministers (which, granted, Harry and Hermione were not entirely guiltless in the now-infamous incident involving one of Fudge's busts and a load of spell-resistant finger-paints). Growing up with six older brothers had given his wife some funny ideas about spying and privacy, so Harry wasn't about to let her in on the truth any time soon.

"Interrogation, eh? I'll do it," James said, and shot his little sister a fearful glance. "I mean, at least I'll be out of the room, right?"

That was enough to recall Harry forcibly to the present, though a little worry lingered in the back of his mind that Kingsley, vengeful bastard that he was, would erase any episodes—er, reconnaissance that he missed during this whole alternate dimension gig. Last Monday's installment had ended with Su Li discovering that her ex-fiancée had faked his own death to hide his affair with Malcolm's Squib cousin, and Harry _had_ to know what happened next.

But first, he had to get his son out of this mess alive. "James…"

"Really, Dad. I honestly think I'll be safer out there."

Lily smiled, sharkishly. James flinched back from the sight—and so did Snape.

Interesting, Harry thought, forcing himself to not look at the door leading to the front room of the shop. One-way transparency spell, or just some first-class eavesdropping and a healthy imagination to boot? Harry was willing to bet on the former—Snape, at least, wasn't the sort to do things halfway. He considered getting angry about the invasion of privacy, but really, he'd lost the moral high ground on this one three years before, when he'd given in and gone with Hermione to the 'All My Aurors'/'Days of Their Lives'/'The Bold and the Brainy' Christmas Special.

"Dad," James said with a quiet sort of nobility, startling Harry guiltily from his ruminations, "if I don't come back from this, if I don't make it out again…whenever you get home, tell Mum I really wasn't the one who burned down a wing of Malfoy Manor last year, and that she should be ashamed of herself for thinking her darling self-sacrificing boy would do such a thing, and now she'll never have the chance to beg me on bended knee for forgiveness."

"Oh, _dramatize_," Lily muttered, clearly unimpressed. One day, Harry thought darkly, she was going to roll her eyes so hard they'd stay lodged that way. Knowing her, she'd find a way to turn it to her own monetary advantage within minutes, and spend the rest of her life profiting shamelessly off her unfortunate ocular disability.

The thought probably shouldn't make him feel quite so much the fond and proud father, but if he was going to have Slytherins for kids, then he wanted them to be the best damned Slytherins the world had seen since Salazar himself skulked the halls of Hogwarts, making secret tunnels in the girls' bathroom and plotting to take over the world. Hell, if the Order had wanted to question Al or Lils, Harry wouldn't have been concerned at all. Lils could talk circles around even the most hardened Aurors, and Al would just be quiet and reasonable and look at everyone with sad eyes until they crumbled and gave him whatever he wanted.

James, though…

"You know, James, I think everyone has moved on from the Burning Manor Incident. Even Draco, as much as he ever moves on from anything," Harry said, mind racing. He didn't honestly think the Order would do anything to harm his son, and knowing them, they'd probably balk at using Veritaserum on a minor, but still—he didn't like the idea of being separated from one of his children, not now, not in this situation.

"Don't insult Father, he can't help it," Scorpius said dutifully.

"Besides, Aunt Ginny wasn't exactly upset about the incident," Teddy said, grinning. "If I'm remembering right, she went out and bought a cake. A giant chocolate cake. With 'Good Work, Son' spelled out in sprinkles on top."

"That thing was amazing," James reminisced with a happy sigh. "Not as good as your cakes, Dad, but there was something special about it anyway. I think because it tasted of Mister Malfoy's pain. His sugary, delicious pain."

"It _was_ good," Scorpius allowed. Harry could practically _hear_ Snape's eye twitch.

"Enough about Mister Malfoy," Harry said, torn between pride in his son's blithe composure and profound irritation at the same. "And no one's about to die, James. You know that you don't have to go if you're afraid. I can--"

"Pfft," James pffted, flapping a hand dismissively. "Please, it's not like they'll kill me or anything. See you later, losers!"

He bounded cheerfully over to Snape, who took a hasty step away, probably terrified that freckles and Potter were catching. "I begin to think the girl's attack was not unprovoked," Snape muttered, giving them all that Look again, the 'I know you're up to something horrible that will end in bloodshed and death but I almost don't care to find out what your Evil Plan is, you're all just that irritating, and I'm good enough that either way I'll come out on top' Look.

Harry had forgotten how expressive the bastard could be. Well, he could be expressive, too. He just had to be a little more blunt about it.

"I'm holding you personally responsible for my son's safety," Harry told his Not-Quite-Former-Professor, forcefully. "If he comes back with so much as a single scratch--"

Snape glanced pointedly at James' shin, then up to the boy's wrist—the denim over the former and the skin of the latter were both indented with distinct toothmarks. Harry winced. "Right, fine, if he comes back with so much as a scratch _not_ from my daughter, then I will hurt you, Snape."

"I have been threatened by more experienced and powerful wizards than you," Snape said, unimpressed, but Harry wasn't close to done.

"Maybe you have," he said mildly. "But _I_—well, I am fully prepared to visit upon you torments to wither the soul and break the mind. _I will hold you down and shampoo your hair_."

Snape blanched. "How dare--"

"And then," Harry interrupted, enjoying himself perhaps a bit too much (naming his son after the man didn't mean he couldn't torment him, after all), "I will brush your teeth, and oh, there will be flossing, Snape, there will be flossing. And then--"

"I understand; you needn't go on," his Almost-Former-Professor ground out, sallow face tinged a pale, queasy green.

"_And then_," Harry went on ruthlessly, because he knew quite well that the other man wouldn't be so easily broken as all that, "I will set my daughter loose on you."

"I'm armed and ready," Lily piped up helpfully, with a wide, shining, horrible smile. "Always ready." Impossibly, her teeth seemed to gleam despite the dim lighting and the shadows that so ominously and theatrically shrouded half her face.

"I will do all that, Snape. And when you are a shaking, sobbing mess, I will tie you to a chair and let Scorpius lecture you on the wonders of fashion and hygeine for hours, Snape. _Hours_."

Someone—not Snape, most likely Teddy—gave a low, sympathetic moan of horror. "Hey," Scorpius said, faintly indignant.

"Your son will return in better shape than he leaves," Snape rasped. "Upon my honor."

"Wow," James said, staring at Harry incredulously. "You really are crazy overprotective. I mean, I always knew you were, but…just, wow."

"Ask me some day about the Hog's Head fiasco in my fifth year," Teddy said, rolling his eyes until all anyone could see of them were the whites. Metamorphmagi eyerolls meant _business_. "Crazy overprotective."

"I thought he was pulling a wand on you," Harry said, perhaps just a tiny bit on the defensive. He wasn't overprotective, he really wasn't, but someone had to make sure the brats weren't getting themselves killed because they were all too busy rolling their eyes to watch where they were going. Seriously, he was starting to think eye-rolling was some kind of horrible contagious plague. Or possibly a new extreme sport.

"Yeah, right, because wands look so much like tulips," Teddy scoffed.

"Someone gave you tulips?" Victoire asked sharply. Teddy froze. "A male someone? _Explain_."

Harry watched with a worried frown as, to a background of nervous babbles about 'before I asked you out—can't help if other people find me overwhelmingly attractive—just a bit of fooling around—he was _really hot'_, Snape led his son away.

"He'll be all right," Al said confidently as the door closed behind James. "Severus Snape wouldn't hurt him. Not Severus _Snape_."

"Yeah, well," Harry said, dubiously. "He wouldn't hurt a normal child, that's true enough. I mean, other than by inflicting life-long emotional trauma on them, of course." He wasn't about to tell his son about that time Snape had thrown jars at him, or the systematic, gleeful way Snape had gone about destroying his will to live throughout his six years at Hogwarts.

Perhaps he shouldn't have romanticized the man so much. It was just so hard to resist a few embellishments, though, when he pictured Snape's spirit hanging around somewhere, watching and listening, horrified and heart-sick at being called 'the bravest man I ever knew' and a 'good soul' and 'the sort of person who was willing to do anything for love'. Yeah, it was funny at the time, the sort of petty revenge that appealed to Harry and Ginny both, except he'd never planned on the brats meeting Snape in a bizarre dimensional mix-up. Now his kids seemed to think the man was, well, sort of a dour unsanitary puppy or something.

Which…well. Might not have been an entirely accurate impression to convey to them.

"You see?" Al said, oblivious to Harry's inner turmoil. "Nothing to worry about."

"Except he doesn't know he's got a James Potter on his hands," Harry said with a sigh. That had the potential to change _everything_. Snape was not known for his sense of perspective, and if he found out James was, well, _James Sirius Potter_…

But then, Snape also didn't know that Harry also had a certain expensive and tasteful wristwatch, one with his kids' faces for the hands, and (in place of the regular hour marks) little symbols for 'home', 'flying', 'eating', 'eating again, dear god, how are you not completely rotund by now', 'mortal peril', 'jail/detention, you miscreant', 'writhing in agony', 'tormenting foes', 'rolling eyes', and the like. Nor did Snape know of the many, many charms he had cast on his children to inform him if they were in danger or pain. Harry'd know in an instant if James was hurt. And that was just being sensible, _not_ overprotective.

Fortunately, he couldn't brood for long, not with the mini-drama playing out in the background between his godson and niece. They were doing their damnedest to match Su Li and Baddock, but until Teddy had a long-lost evil twin show up with a magical demon baby bent on world-domination, the two of them were doomed to failure.

"Open-mindedness is sexy," Victoire pronounced as Teddy's bumbling, confused explanations finally ground to a halt. Teddy brightened tentatively. "And this means you had the sense to recognize that I'm not only better than all the other girls you know, but _every single person _you know."

"Uh. Yeah," Teddy said, sounding confused and hesitantly relieved. "That's it exactly."

"And everyone you ever will know," she added, her eyes narrowing suddenly to slits, her head tilted to an angle that should have been coy but instead chilled the blood and froze the marrow. "Am I correct?"

Harry was pleased to see Teddy had brains enough to agree quite emphatically. Perhaps he wouldn't be in the very dregs of Su Li and Baddock's new world order. Just, you know, nearly a dreg.

"Of course," Scorpius interjected slyly, because Malfoys thrived on trouble and hair gel the way flowers thrived on sunlight and water, "it would be perfectly acceptable if you did have a boyfriend, Teddy. After all, what really matters is continuing the family line, right? And as you _are _a metamorphmagus…"

He trailed off with a provocative waggle of his eyebrows, a waggle Harry was quite certain he'd copied directly from Ginny—after all, Draco would sooner die than do something so plebeian as wiggle _or_ waggle a single eyebrow, and Astoria was more the wink-wink nudge-nudge sort. Though, Harry had to admit, they were very dainty, aristocratic nudges.

Then he realized exactly what Scorpius was getting at, and his mind shut down completely.

"You can't possibly mean," Teddy said, staring at his cousin in disbelief, while Victoire sighed long-sufferingly and Lily giggled helplessly into her hand. "You aren't seriously suggesting…that I, that I…"

"Have I ever told you how much I admire your facility of expression and the erudition of your thoughts?" Scorpius asked innocently.

"_I am not giving myself a manwomb,_" Teddy howled. Lily broke down into loud, shameless guffaws.

"Because I admire both. Deeply," Scorpius said. Al's sudden hacking cough sounded suspiciously like laughter.

"And don't knock wombs 'til you've tried one on for size," Lily counseled wisely. Which, just, _no, _Harry thought, with the sort of eloquence that brought tears to Hermione's eyes. Just. No.

"_I tried one on for nine months_!" Teddy said, his voice as shrill as his eyes were wide. "We all did! And I like Little Ted where he is, thanks very much!"

"No reason you can't have the best of both worlds," Al told him, voice strained and his face a deep red.

"After all, you _are_ part Malfoy," Scorpius coaxed.

"If you children don't shut up," Victoire interjected calmly, patting Teddy consolingly on the hand as he started wheezing alarmingly, "I shall damage you. In ways both painful and _intimately_ related to our current topic of conversation, if you catch my meaning."

"Hard not to," Al grumbled.

"I'm pretty sure your meaning caught _us_," Scorpius agreed. "Bear traps and spears may have been involved."

"You can't castrate _me_," Lily said cheerfully.

"Your father is paying for my therapy," Harry told Scorpius. He wondered if commanding an Obliviator to erase the last five minutes of his life would constitute an abuse of his position and political power, and then he wondered if he really cared. "Just so you know."

The Malfoy heir gave this all of a second's consideration, then shrugged. "That should make for an amusing conversation. You will let me listen in, won't you? Of course, Father's rich enough to afford even _your_ therapy bills, although I thought you were already paying for his, after the Burning Manor Incident."

"Nothing like reciprocal child-induced emotional trauma to build bonds between former enemies," Harry advised, with, he felt, a show of sagacity that belied his still-somewhat-tender(-and-delicious) years.

"Did you know that the magical world had never even heard of therapy until you and Aunt Ginny reproduced?" Victoire asked, in what Harry wished he could believe was a total non sequitur. "And now it's the fastest growing field in magical Britain."

"You should bring that up when you inevitably run for Minister, once Mister Baddock finally gets rid of Shacklebolt," Scorpius advised, a distant, visionary gleam in his eyes that boded ill for everyone in general and Harry in particular. "I can see it now, Harry: 'A vote for Potter is a vote for a healthy economy!' 'Harry Potter: providing the community with new jobs and neuroses since 2004!'"

"_You_ are why we can't have nice things," Teddy told his cousin solemnly.

* * *

First time I wrote this, there was no manwomb, no Auror Soap Opera, and no talk of therapy. This is why _I_ can't have nice things.


	12. In Which James Is Sadly Disillusioned

Disclaimer: NOTHING IS MINE. NOTHING.

So, uh, Happy Halloween, yo. Sorry for the epic lateness. Things have been really, really weird lately, is all I can say.

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CHAPTER TWELVE: In Which James Is Sadly Disillusioned

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James had never been officially interrogated before, not after last year's Gobstones Disaster or any of the Goblin-nappings or even the Malfoy Manor On Fire Incident (which _wasn't_ his fault), and he rather thought it something of a let-down. No chains, no gruesome death-threats, no manipulative good Auror and spazzy, violent bad Auror. Just a bunch of worried-looking people asking stupid questions and occasionally assuring him, unconvincingly, that they could tell if he was lying.

One or two of his questioners actually did try to look intimidating, for a while, but James was hard to intimidate--side effect of growing up with Lily. But they were obviously sort of sad when he just stared at them, bemused, so out of the kindness of his heart, James added a little stutter to his speech and shook in manufactured fear. The wannabe-imposing ones seemed gratified; the fluffier remember-he's-just-a-boy ones cringed; Snape pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered angrily under his breath.

It wasn't entirely their fault they sucked at the whole interrogation thing so badly, James thought, deciding to give them the benefit of the doubt—for now. Everyone was an amateur in intimidation when compared to Grandmum Weasley. Particularly after that time when, due to circumstances beyond James' control and probably instigated entirely by Lily, the knee-biting little freak, the Burrow suddenly and inexplicably wound up upside-down and inside-out. And how was James to know Grandpa Weasley kept gasoline in there, anyway, or that it would react so badly to a bit of magic and a few mysterious fires and an animated stove?

"He's sticking to his story," a tall, middle-aged wizard said, frowning. "No inconsistencies, aside from the, ahem, the obvious, and all of that can be explained away by the story about alternate realities."

"It's not a story," James said indignantly, which might have been more effective if his Indignant Face weren't so clearly well-practiced. "It's the truth."

He hesitated then, because honestly, he could kind of see where they were all coming from with the 'alternate universes _what_' looks. "I mean, I think it's the truth. Or at least, Dad thinks that's what's going on, and he's not wrong very often. Well, okay, that's a lie, but usually he's only wrong about stupid things. Well, not stupid, but, uh, the stuff that isn't life-or-death. Like, you know, macaroni and cheese not being its own food group. Because it really is, and he just refuses to admit it. He puts broccoli in our macaroni and cheese, for Merlin's sake. _Broccoli_. Which...so yeah, maybe he is a bit deranged, but that's not his fault, 'cause he had a rough childhood, and he gets the big stuff right, except Lily, but she's still pretty short, so maybe she doesn't count as big stuff."

He frowned at one set of girl-sized bite marks, and then the other (granted, one set was little more than an indentation in his jeans, but still). "Why Mum and Dad even wanted a third kid, I dunno, it's not like me'n Al aren't enough. Maybe they just wanted someone else to name after dead people, 'cept Lily's only got one dead-person name. Mister Malfoy _says_ her middle name is meant to celebrate the tragic passing of Aunt Luna's sanity, but Aunt Luna says she never had sanity in the first place, so it can't be that.

"Plus, you can't really believe much of what Mister Malfoy says, because Dad says he's a dirty liar. Mister Malfoy says it takes one to know one, and then they either glare a lot or they have a fib-off, you know, a lying contest, which Dad usually wins 'cause he just tells the truth but no one ever believes it, 'cause—well, Mum says regardless of what's normally true, _Dad's_ truths are definitely stranger than fiction."

His interrogators' eyes had glazed over, like donuts. Delicious, delicious, squishy round donuts.

"In conclusion: broccoli," James added, in disgust. "_Broccoli_. Like we wouldn't see it floating there in the cheese, bumping up against the macaroni, just 'cause he charmed the bits orange! Of course we knew it was there. We always know," he added, trying to make his voice go low and raspy and threatening, but instead it cracked, jumped an octave, performed a brief and embarrassing tonal jig, and reluctantly settled back into its habitual tenor. Damn hormones.

"Also," he went on valiantly, just when his audience began to shake off their rambling-induced stupor, "I shan't tell you a thing. You may torture me however you wish, but I won't reveal a single detail. Not a one. My loyalties run deep and strong and true, like a never-ending bottomless chasm of fidelity. My lips are sealed, sealed like envelopes, only not easily-opened envelopes, but the ones you end up practically shredding 'cause they won't open no matter what you do, and then Mum gets all snarky at you for making a mess and being defeated by parchment, but I tell you, it was crafty, sly, Slytherin parchment, it was. Also, if you shred me, Dad will be angry, and you won't like him when he's angry, mostly 'cause he really won't like _you_ if you make him angry, and he yells a lot at people who annoy him, and he can yell _really loud_. There's an entire chapter about that in the Unofficial Biography. Nevertheless, I am, my friends, a font of silence, a--"

"Oh, dear god," someone uttered lowly, despair the mud in which the pigs of her words wallowed.

"Your father sent you with us so you could answer all of our questions," Snape reminded him wearily. "Not tell us at length about how you will refuse to answer our questions."

"Just setting the mood," James protested, a little sulkily. "I mean, I figure someone should at least try to get the whole scenario down right, it's like you're not even trying. You do know how this is supposed to go, yeah? I resist, you look threatening, I squeal like a pig, sing like a canary, make like a glass of milk and spill—stop crying, lady, it's just metaphorical milk, no use crying over metaphorical milk!"

"Ah, but it is in fact the spilled milk of simile," the bearded hippy-looking guy in the corner said wisely. "Nevertheless—Hestia, it's quite all right, no need to weep."

"For the love of _everything, _sir, make him stop!" the pretty witch wailed.

"This isn't some bizarre version of good Auror, bad Auror, is it?" James asked, without much hope. He could see this sort of tactic working on his Dad, maybe, 'cause if Dad had one weakness it was crying women, but James was too wily and hard-hearted and, well, too much his mother's son for that sort of thing to work on him.

And he was, for the first time, kind of glad his dad refused to talk much about his work. If Auror interrogations in his world were anything like this, well, his illusions of his dad and Uncle Ron's respective coolness factors would forever be shattered.

Well, not Uncle Ron's. Uncle Ron's cool was, like, hex-proof. He drove a car. An _invisible flying_ car. Aunt Hermione said all he needed was the Lasso of Truth, which James didn't quite understand, but if anyone was cool enough to have a Truth Lasso, it was Uncle Ron. She had also muttered something about a Wonderbra, but James didn't think Uncle Ron had man-breasts big enough to warrant extra support, so he figured that was just Aunt Hermione being a bit odd and, well, Muggle-ish. Probably couldn't help it, her parents were dentists, after all.

"I'm afraid that we are not, in fact, all—or even mostly all—Aurors," Hippy the Beardster said solemnly. His beard really was impressive. James imagined quite a lot must have gotten lost in there, over the years. Possibly small furry animals. And it'd be a brilliant way to dispose of, oh, say, the bodies of inconvenient younger sisters. Lost in white tangles of old man-hair, never be found again, feeble cries muffled in the night…

"No, we are an…independent organization," Hippy finished, and James frowned a little at having his reverie so thoughtlessly disturbed. Also, it was a little creepy, the way the ancient dude peered at James intently over his half-moon spectacles.

On the other hand…

"Oh, good," James said cheerfully. This was _Valuable Intel_, what Hippy was telling him. Dad would be so proud of his cunning counter-interrogation. "So you're a significant pause independent organization significant look, not Aurors. Then it's okay that you're totally lame. I guess."

"Have you by chance consumed large amounts of candy in the recent past?" Hippy the Purple-Robed asked, after a stunned silence (broken only by renewed whimpers from that one poor witch, that Hestia character).

Snape muttered something that sounded an awful lot like, "Or recreational drugs?"

"Nah," James answered Hippy the Hip, rather than Snape the Totally Even More Hip Than Hippy. Because Snape really was more hip, despite his lack of Awesome Beard—he got extra points for the sneer that just wouldn't quit. "Mum and Dad won't let me have more than a piece of candy a day, now. Last time I had more—well, Mum says I was unbearable. Dad says he doesn't really remember much 'cept despair and the screams of the damned and the howling abyss of his soul, but I know he's lying about that all."

"Lying," someone repeated faintly.

"Well, yeah," James said, shrugging. "I mean, we all know only Teddy's soul has a howling abyss in it, 'cause his pain is totally unique and unprecedented."

"…I think we know all we need to know, for now," Hippy said, blinking slowly. "Thank you, Mister Potter. Emmaline, if you could escort our young guest back to his family?"

An elegant dark-haired older lady--Emmaline, no doubt, James noted with professional, uh, attention-paying--shot Hippy a dark glower. "You will pay for this," she replied coolly.

"Jolly good," Hippy said, beaming. "That will be all, then."

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"That's it?" Potter demanded, frowning at Albus. "We hardly asked him anything at all."

"But he has told us enough, I think," Albus replied, imperturbable.

"He's evil!" Hestia cried, still somewhat beset by hysteria.

"Quite possibly, but he is most certainly not a Death Eater," Albus said, and Severus really did have to agree. Death Eaters weren't quite so imaginatively sadistic as that little bugger had proven himself to be.

"We should at least use Veritaserum on him, before we clear 'em entirely," Black said stubbornly, but Severus cut him off with a sharp snort.

"Black. Feeble though it may be, you do have a brain—use it for once. I swear it only hurts the first time." Someone suppressed a laugh—Lily, Severus suspected, before he reminded himself sharply he hardly cared. "Veritaserum not only forces the subject to speak only the truth, but to be more far more loquacious than they are usually, as well."

Once again, the general intelligence of the Order failed to meet even Severus' low, low expectations. At the round of blank looks his assertion gained him, he started silently counting to ten, lost his patience somewhere between two and three, and snapped, "You all heard him in there. Do you wish to loosen his tongue even further, you hopeless moronic duncebags?"

Comprehension dawned, and with it horror. Severus rather enjoyed the sickly looks on most of his compatriots' faces.

"I'd like to remove it altogether, myself," someone said after a moment, with forced cheer; this minor witticism was greeted with strained laughter. Severus sneered the special sneer he reserved for those who said things he found mildly clever and therefore wished he'd said himself; it was a cold expression, and one without a hope for forgiveness attached.

"So for now, we accept that they are who they claim to be?" Lily asked tiredly, and the mood of the crowd shifted abruptly, most people sending her awkward, sidelong glances or staring fixedly at their hands. Severus, who was not so uselessly tactful, watched his former friend closely, and approved of the scowl that twisted her lips at the pity aimed her way from the rest of their…compatriots.

Lily had been with the majority of the Order during the interrogation, watching from another room—but seeing the boy, supposedly her grandson from another world, had nevertheless visibly drained her. It was obvious to everyone.

Severus felt a pang of sympathy and protectiveness, which he quashed ruthlessly. They were not friends any longer, after all, not truly.

"I hardly see what else we can do," Severus said, wanting to take some of the focus off of her, even as he berated himself inwardly for caring.

"You must be joking," someone objected, but Albus' quiet voice silenced the room.

"I believe we must. They are not polyjuiced; they wear no glamour spells, or any disguises Alistair can detect. They are not lying to us—or, at the very least, they do not believe themselves to be speaking falsely."

Hard to argue with any of that, really, but Albus went on, appeasing the masses. "We will of course remain wary; these are not trusting times. But…for now, we must entertain the very real possibility that they are indeed visitors from another reality."

Severus wisely conjured up earmuffs in the split second before the room erupted. Alas, as earmuffs conjured in Albus' presence inevitably did, they turned out a vivid pink.

* * *

Review please?


	13. In Which Harry Tastes the Bitter Onion o

Disclaimer: Shockingly, Santa couldn't get Harry Potter to fit into my stocking. Next year, I'm hanging a pillowcase on the mantle.

Uh. So. There's this thing, kinda strange and distracting, called Real Life. And it decided to club me over the head and drag me off to its lair for the past couple of months. Whoops?

* * *

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: In Which Harry Tastes the Bitter Onion of Defeat

* * *

Harry let out a quiet sigh of relief when James stumbled, scowling, back into their makeshift little cell. Angry pout notwithstanding, the boy seemed unhurt. Or at least no more hurt than he'd already been, courtesy of Lily and her sharp, gleaming canines.

"You're alright?" Harry asked, just to be sure, because he was just that kind of parent. You know. A good one.

"Yeah," his eldest said gloomily, scuffing the toe of one boot along the floor. Harry had a vivid flashback to the way James would get when he was six and had been denied a third cookie after dinner, all sulky and deliberately, self-consciously cute. Actually, it was the same way James got last week when Ginny wouldn't let him have a fourth piece of pie, except the aww-shucks-I-just-want-one-more-Mum-oh-and-have-I-mentioned-how-fantastic-you-look-today act was no longer adorable enough to sucker _anyone_, not even Ron (who did, after all, intimately understand the torments—nay, the _agonies_--of the average teenage boy's appetite).

"What's wrong?" Harry asked, bemused, because he was pretty sure withholding dessert wasn't an Order-approved interrogation technique (in fact, he was fairly certain the opposite was true--Snape and Dumbledore were more than cunning enough to recognize the merits of that old Lemon Drop Overload trick). Anyway, everyone knew that evildoers were surprisingly capable of going without cookies for longer than a few hours at a time; Harry was willing to be that Voldemort hadn't tasted a chocolate chip since his days as a student, which would explain a lot. Ron was pretty sure there was special Evildoer Training involved, but then again, well, it was _Ron_.

James huffed out a long, put-upon sigh, lower lip jutting. "It's nothing, Dad. I mean, nothing important. It's just—I was expecting something different, you know? More professional. Shoddy questioning all around. They didn't even threaten me, really."

Harry wisely decided not to spend too much time wondering why his son sounded so deeply disappointed. Instead, he said, carefully, "I'm pretty sure the good guys try not to threaten kids. It's kind of a requirement for being a good guy, actually. I mean, the Auror handbook has an entire chapter devoted to how you don't threaten children. In extra big print. With liberal application of both capslock and italics."

"Lame," James pronounced.

"But how did it go?" Al demanded. "Aside from the whole not being maimed or tortured thing, I mean." He and Scorpius had commandeered a corner not long after James left, and had spent the interval plotting together in low voices. Harry couldn't quite make out _what_ they were plotting, and he knew if he asked they'd give him identical wounded, wobbly-lipped looks of betrayal, probably accompanied by one of Al's many rants about the evils of such blatant anti-Slytherin prejudice in Magical Law Enforcement.

But Harry was nearly forty, after all, and wise to the ways of both his children and the Wizarding World. Two Slytherins talking quietly in a corner equaled one thing: plots, evil plans, world domination, the whole shebang. Or, you know, budding romance, but the boys were still a little young for that.

Dear _Merlin_, Harry thought, panicked, let them still be too young for that. He was _not _ready for his family dinners to include Draco Malfoy. He wasn't sure he'd _ever _be ready for his family dinners to include Draco Malfoy.

"It went okay, I guess," James said with a shrug, lounging against the wall and picking nonchalantly at his fingernails. "I. Uh. Made one of them cry. A lot. And a couple more looked like they were about to join in." He actually sounded embarrassed, but it was an 'I'm being all awkward because I'm just that modest' brand of embarrassment, rather than a proper 'I make grown wizards and witches cry like babies because I'm just that irritating' type of shame.

Lily beamed at her oldest brother, arguments and tooth-marks apparently forgotten. "You're so totally my hero," she informed James proudly. "You're, like, Aslan to my Lucy, dude. Ender to my Bean. The hip, in fact, to my jiggity hop."

James blushed, but looked pleased, if rather confused. Trust the boy to forget about his—how had he put it? Ah, yes, his "virulent and eternal grudge", as well as his "near-mortal wounds"—because of a couple of admiring words, Harry thought fondly.

Teddy pouted a little—he was used to being Lily's hero, after all—but Victoire dutifully fluttered her eyelashes at him and all thought quite visibly flew from his head on the sparkly pink wings of infatuation.

"Oh, James, James, James. _James_. You are definitely a Potter," Scorpius remarked dryly, shaking his head. The boy was most definitely an improvement on Draco, but it seemed a need to state the obvious was as ingrained in the Malfoy line as that pointy-faced anemic male model look. "Father always says that only a Potter could be taken prisoner one moment and reduce his captor in hopeless heart-rending tears the next."

He slid a smug, knowing glance Harry's way.

Oh, for Merlin's sake... "Look," Harry snapped, exasperated, "tell your father to just let it go, all right? For the last bloody time, I didn't make the guy cry. It was the onion's fault, all right? The onion's, not mine. My kidnapper had very sensitive eyes." Harry had felt rather sorry for the sobbing man, actually, and had led him gently to a sink and helped him rinse out his eyes, before clubbing him over the head with a frying pan, tying him up, and tossing him to the Ministry through the Floo.

He'd have escorted the kidnapper himself, of course, if the turkey hadn't needed watching. Plus, hearing about Shacklebolt going quietly apoplectic whenever Harry did things in his own special rulebook-what-rulebook-since-when-do-Aurors-have-a-rulebook-la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you way was practically, well, life-affirming.

"In all fairness," said Teddy the Terminal Hufflepuff, "the onion didn't exactly mash itself into his face, rub itself into his eyes, and stuff itself up his nostrils."

"Yeah, well," Harry muttered. "Teach the bastard to try and kidnap a man from his own damn kitchen the day before his wife's birthday."

"'Eat Onion Death, Arse-Face'," Al, Teddy, and James quoted together, grinning widely, because they obviously did not know when to let things go. Certainly not a Potter trait, that. Harry blamed Draco, the grudge-holding little ferret.

Lily gaped, eyes wide as saucers. "I don't remember this. Those actual words left Dad's actual mouth and I don't remember. And no one ever told me! My life is over. Fo' shizzle, my friends. Fo shizzle, verily," she cried, tragically. She turned her face away from them, as if the sight of their traitorous non-storytelling faces physically pained her.

Sometimes, Harry felt, suicide was self-defense.

* * *

Later, Severus had to acknowledge that keeping the intruders in the shop had been, well, unforgivably and inarguably _stupid_.

"Short-sighted," Albus corrected gently, but everyone knew that was Dumbledore-speak for "_completely brainless_".

But…well, they hadn't had all that much choice, in the end. The Order couldn't risk bringing possible Death Eaters to any of their strongholds, not when Voldemort was so close to taking over the Wizarding World forever, and the storeroom had seemed a safe enough location at the time. After all, who would know to look in the back room of a tiny shop for possible evildoers-slash-transdimensional-hitchhikers?

Except enormous, unexplained bursts of magic tended to be noticed by the Ministry. And the Ministry, being largely run by Death Eaters and Voldemort sympathizers, reacted rather more efficiently than it ever had under Fudge. The Dark Lord, after all, wasn't quite as forgiving of incompetence as his predecessor.

At least Severus had kept his wits about him during the attack, hiding himself away from the Death Eaters and Ministry stooges sent to investigate. He'd kept his cover intact for decades longer than he'd ever thought he could, back at the beginning of the Second War, and he wasn't about to lose it now, not because of some brainless twits who couldn't keep their freckled noses in their own damn dimensions. Unless, of course, the aforementioned twits actually were Death Eaters in disguise. In which case his cover was quite possibly already blown wide open—after all, Voldemort would have long ago informed him of such an intricate and bizarre plot, if he still had the Dark Lord's trust.

The Order hadn't stood a chance against the Death Eaters. They'd been forced to retreat almost immediately under the onslaught, and Fake Potter and the children were taken. Albus called an emergency meeting at Grimmauld, of course. The Order hadn't even all arrived before the screaming matches began. It was a wonder, really, that Severus' eardrums hadn't burst years ago.

"We can't let You-Know-Who keep them," Granger said intensely, stating the obvious as always.

"Don't see why not," Hestia Jones replied, still sulking after that ridiculous farce of an interrogation.

"If they really are from another dimension--"

"_SPIES_--"

"You can't be serious! We've had to leave some of our _own_ before, and for all we know that was a rescue mission--"

"But if they're really who they say they are, we can't let the Dark Lord get his hands on that kind of knowledge--"

"Let 'em take each other out, that's what I say--"

Severus sighed. This was, he suspected, going to take a while—and Albus probably wouldn't let him get away with the earmuffs this time. Damn.

* * *

There were, Harry told himself, worse things than being locked in the backroom of a small Parshi Alley shop in an alternate reality with your children, niece, godson, and favorite Malfoy while living versions of dead comrades debated your fate.

Yeah, there were loads of things worse than that. Like Death Eaters bursting in through the door, wands at the ready and hexes on their masked lips. Like having to take on eight Death Eaters alone, and somehow dropping four of them without much trouble, before being distracted by James' unexpected and extremely unwanted help. Like seeing Teddy hit the ground, screaming from a pain curse.

Or like being taken out by that ninth Death Eater that he really should have noticed—that he _would_ have noticed, if he hadn't been trying to keep Al out of harm's way—because, quite frankly, ninjas the Death Eaters weren't. Despite the all-black wardrobe.

Yeah, Harry thought muzzily when he woke in his new cell, opening his eyes and immediately spying Victoire slouched in a dark corner, Teddy's head on her lap. All things considered, he was feeling kind of partial to the Parshi Alley shop, right now.

"This is getting to be unsettlingly normal," he commented, shoving himself upright. He glanced around, his heart beating over-time when he took in Scorpius, Al, and James—all of them fine, thank Merlin—but not his daughter.

"Where's--"

Al grinned proudly. "We took care of her, Dad. When we realized what was going on, James stunned her and Scorpius Disillusioned her and I dragged her behind a few boxes—s'why I was in the way, when that one guy tried to slice off your, er--"

"Right," Harry agreed uneasily, resisting the urge to cover his _er_.

"Sorry about that," Al said, flushing, because they all knew Harry wouldn't have gone down quite so quickly if he hadn't had to cover Al's arse during the fight.

But—he'd have gone down anyway, maybe after a few more hexes and curses, and this way Lily was hopefully safe. And also, his _er _remained wonderfully intact. "Good thinking. Really good thinking," Harry approved, nodding to the kids. "I mean, obviously whenever we see Lils again she'll kill you all horribly, but…"

"Eurgh," Scorpius said, paling. James trembled a little. Al, who had relatively little to fear from his adoring younger sister, shrugged and smiled.

"Smug little bastard," James grumbled, but Al just batted his eyelashes innocently—which rather proved James' point, Harry thought, but it wasn't like this was news or anything. All Slytherins were smug little bastards. _Harry_ had been a smug little bastard, back in the day, and he'd only ever been an almost-Slytherin.

Clearly, if his sons and Scorpius were well enough to be worrying about Lily's revenge, then they were all right. Victoire had never not been all right in her life, which just left Harry's godson. "Is Teddy okay?" he asked, turning to his niece. She rolled her eyes.

"I'm in terrible pain, actually," Teddy answered for her, his melodramatic Black side showing through for a short, horrible moment. "But I'll be okay," he added immediately, because Teddy was also part Lupin, and Lupins were nothing if not the long-suffering martyr type.

Victoire patted her boyfriend on the head. He beamed. Harry rolled his eyes a bit, because he'd forgotten how irritating young love could be. He could probably deal, though, as long as they didn't start making him flash back to Lavender and Ron's fiasco of a flirtation. The moment Teddy became 'Wed-Wed', he was disowning them both. Though Teddy was probably the one who'd come up with any saccharine nicknames, if he was going to be totally honest with himself.

"Okay. So, our situation is... We have no wands. No weapons. I'm the only one here with any real combat training, and I'm locked in a cell with three teenagers and two besotted young adults. There's hordes of Death Eaters all around, and not a single onion to use on 'em, even if I could reach their eyes through those stupid masks," Harry summed up a bit glumly.

"At least we have each other," Al said, absolutely serious.

"Yeah," James agreed. "Al's little, we can use him to bludgeon anyone who comes in the door."

Harry gave this due consideration, while Al yelped and kicked his brother in the ankle.

"It's a plan."

* * *

Lily wasn't sure why she decided to go look around the shop storeroom. After all, Tonks had already gone investigating and made a full report to the Order: the strangers were all missing, and there were no bodies, only a bit of blood—not enough for any of the wounds received to be particularly dangerous. The supposed alternate-Potters appeared to put up a decent fight, which backed their story, but that could have been staged.

So Lily wasn't sure what she was hoping to find. Some shred of evidence to prove that the visitors weren't what they claimed to be, maybe. Or, her traitorous brain whispered, something that proved they were precisely who they said they were, proof that she had another chance with her Harry.

Regardless of what she'd gone looking for, though, what she _got_ was a small redheaded girl leaping out at her, wand raised high, a feral snarl twisting her lips. "I am going to _kill_ my brothers," the girl snapped, which wasn't quite the battle cry Lily anticipated. "Who are you and what are you doing here and where's my family, huh? Talk now, lady, 'cause I will totes mess yo' shi—"

What the little girl would totes do to her shi—, Lily didn't wait to find out. She flicked her wand, stunning her attacker with practiced ease.

Well. This was bound to complicate things a bit.

* * *

You have no idea how annoying it is to write two characters with the same name. NO IDEA. Also, review please.


	14. In Which James' Sordid Past Is Revealed

Disclaimer: I own nothing. NOTHING.

If I, hypothetically, already had a sequel to this story vaguely planned and outlined, would people be at all interested? Also, I want to do a bit of research for my new WIP (Harry Potter, Transdimensional Guidance Counselor), which means I basically would love it if people could tell me their favorite Harry Potter crossovers. Yes, I said **crossovers**. I'm so going there. Uh, a couple of people have already suggested Artemis Fowl, but I've never actually read the books, so...that's a no-go.

This chapter is dedicated to Jimaine, who giggled a lot and put up with me asking 'WHICH BIT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT TELL ME NOW' every five seconds.

* * *

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: In Which James' Sordid Past Is Revealed

* * *

Harry winced when Draco Malfoy sauntered into their cell a few hours after they'd all regained some semblance of lucidity. Harry had been hoping with all his might that their interrogator would be anyone but someone the children knew in their world, so it only made sense that Scorpius' freaking father—not to mention Teddy's cousin, and a man Harry's kids were all inexplicably extremely fond of—would come sashaying in through the door, all puffed up with pride and ignorance and idiocy and other annoying inbred Malfoyish traits.

He was more than willing to take partial credit for Scorpius' relatively enlightened attitude. Merlin knew Astoria and Draco hadn't exactly fostered a sense of modesty or thoughtfulness in their son. All right, so Scorpius wasn't modest, exactly, but at least sometimes he pretended to be a little humble if he thought it would get him his way.

But then again—well, Harry couldn't help noticing that this Draco looked…considerably younger than the Draco back in his universe, somehow. Less mature, and wasn't that a frightening thought?

Maybe here, his family hadn't fallen from favor with Voldemort; maybe he'd never been forced to prove himself by murdering others; maybe he hadn't had to live through a couple of years of terror at Hogwarts, trapped between family loyalty and fear. A pity, Harry thought. A little existential dread and a year or two of constant panicking had done his universe's Draco a world of good.

Harry found it rather interesting that this world's Malfoy had a receding hairline, just like his counterpart—definitive proof that even if he hadn't hexed Malfoy during a rough interdepartmental poker tournament a few years ago, a certain amount of baldness would've happened anyway. He was so definitely rubbing that in Malfoy's face, once they got home.

"Well, well, well," Draco murmured smugly, sounding like every bad henchman cliché come to life. "What have we got here?"

"Inbreeding?" James offered ingenuously.

"Hey," Scorpius protested, but it sounded suspiciously half-hearted.

"James, Scorpius. Is this really the time?" Al asked, his Stern Disapproval face firmly in place. Scorpius rolled his eyes.

Harry bit his lip rather savagely to stop himself from laughing—nothing made Malfoy lose his composure like being ignored, and his darlings were doing an excellent job of pretending the Death Eater didn't even exist. Hell, they were self-absorbed enough that it probably wasn't even intentional.

Draco cleared his throat loudly, and no one paid him the slightest bit of attention. So, of course, he cleared his throat again, this time sounding rather like a kneazle trying to hack up a hairball, only somehow sophisticated at the same time.

The children eyed him balefully. "It's not polite to interrupt," Al said severely, as if he weren't stuck in a tiny, grimy little cell in the middle of an alternate dimension—as if Draco weren't their enemy right now. "We'll get to you in a minute."

"Ooh," James said, eyes going round, "are you here to ask questions? You can interrogate me!" He bounced in place a little, excited beyond reason by this second chance at a _properly aggressive _questioning.

"You're unbelievable," Scorpius said, staring. Harry privately agreed, a little worried about his eldest son's mental health.

James, to Harry's utter horror, winked at Scorpius saucily. "Thanks, babe," he said throatily. "M'glad you think so. I've always thought so, too."

Harry shuddered. Scorpius scrambled backwards, his face a rictus of terrified confusion. Al went more than a little green, and Teddy snickered, burying his face in his girlfriend's plentiful pink hair.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Victoire sighed. "_Boys… _I believe you were about to gloat?" she asked Draco, getting everyone back on track quite handily.

Draco had gone rather red-cheeked and scowly, looking like nothing so much as a toddler about to throw a tantrum. Not exactly seemly for a man nearing forty, Harry thought with a comforting feeling of superiority. Good to know some things really didn't change from world to world.

Harry made a mental note to never, ever stop taunting his Malfoy about this entire incident. Gold, the whole thing.

"I was _not_ about to gloat, thank you--" he began, and Harry smiled to himself, satisfied, because the moment an unwary bystander—or, he supposed, wary villain—succumbed to an argument with one of his kids, they'd already lost.

"Please," Scorpius scoffed, and Harry was a little bemused at the scorn in the younger Malfoy's eyes. Scorpius worshiped his father, nearly as much as Draco had once worshiped Lucius. "Everyone knows that when you come swanning into a prisoner's cell like that, there's only one course of action left to you. Gloating, maybe a bit of light dominance-affirming torture, a couple vaguely threatening smiles, and a parting one-liner. This is common knowledge."

"It's true," Al agreed, supportive as ever of his best friend.

"Maybe," Draco said coldly, "I'm here to kill you all. Did you consider that?"

Teddy emitted a loud and bizarre croaking noise. Everyone turned to stare, and he went a dull red, ducking his head and running a hand through his bright hair. "That was supposed to be ominous thunder crashing in the distance," he explained, rightfully embarrassed. Harry winced, wondering what Lupin would thing of how he, Ginny, and Andromeda had raised his beloved son.

He already knew what Tonks would say. Something along the lines of 'He's perfect in every way, and hysterical to boot'. But Harry had known Tonks fairly well, so he didn't exactly find her imaginary approval very comforting. She was _Tonks._ She thought pig-noses were first-rate humor.

"Thunder? Sounded more like a frog giving birth to a pterodactyl," James replied, brow furrowed.

"Oh, shut it, squirt."

"An _angry_ pterodactyl."

"Next time, stick to a dun dun DUN," Victoire advised her boyfriend sagely. "Traditional, and pretty hard to get wrong."

"Your confidence in my abilities overwhelms me, sweetheart," Teddy pouted.

"I really am going to kill you all," Draco muttered, pained. "I'd say painfully and slowly, but it will be quick, if only so you _stop talking_."

"You aren't here to kill us," Al scoffed, rather more on the ball than any of Harry's other bratlings. Harry was going to have to sit them all down for a nice long talk about not being utter idiots one of these days. He was all for foolish and suicidal bravado, of course, but he was beginning to think the children didn't even register that they were in danger.

"You aren't gonna kill us," Al repeated, "'cause you're a _minion_." He glanced nervously at Harry, obviously seeking reassurance, or maybe approval. Harry grimaced back, torn between relief that at least one of his children could reason their way out of a wet paper bag and despair that even said young navigator on the choppy seas of logic did not see the dangers inherent in taunting Dark Wizards.

"I am not a minion!" Draco cried, aghast.

"He is not a minion," Scorpius agreed loyally (though Harry suspected the show of fidelity was more towards his last name and bloodline and less out of any sense of filial duty). But even Malfoy's Not-Son didn't sound altogether confident.

"Oh, he is too," Al said stubbornly, setting his jaw.

"I am not!"

Somehow, Harry was utterly unsurprised to see Draco Malfoy sinking to a teenager's level.

"Of course you're a minion," Victoire said with the sort of ruthless, inexorable reason that made men three times her age tremble with fear. In the Wizarding World, nothing was quite so rare, and thus quite so feared, as common sense. "You are a Death Eater, are you not? A servant of Lord Voldemort? Then you are a minion. And when a minion visits a group of mysterious prisoners, it can only be for gloating purposes."

For gloating purposes, Harry repeated to himself silently. When he got back to his own universe, he was never, ever going to stop laughing. Assuming Malfoy didn't just whip out a wand and Crucio the hell out of them all for being impossibly irritating. But then again, if he did, Harry would get to arrest him, which was always good for a cackle or two.

Plus, last time he'd arrested Draco, Neville had bought pretty much the entire extended Weasley clan a round of drinks—and Harry hadn't had to pay for a drop of alcohol for weeks.

"You can't kill us before you know exactly who we are," Al added, taking up the slack, "Or why we're here, and what kind of threat we might be to your, uh—"

"Lord and master's regime of doom," Teddy suggested brightly.

"Right," Al said, nodding sharply. "I mean, haven't you ever read…well, _anything?_"

"Now," Harry took over quickly, before Draco burst into frustrated tears or attacked the children in a preemptive defense of his sanity, "Kids, I've told you about the differences between fiction and reality. Several times."

"Well, yes," Scorpius said slowly. "But we're not really going by fiction, here."

"We're going by Uncle Ron's stories," James agreed, signing his uncle's death sentence right then and there.

"And your unofficial biography," Teddy added maliciously. Harry groaned, because all of his friends had a part in that piece of trash, and he couldn't exactly massacre his entire family. Not if he wanted to arrest Draco at some point in the near future. It was hard to arrest someone when you were stuck in Azkaban for life.

He decided that selective hearing was the better part of valor, and turned back to the person he was rapidly starting to think of as 'AlternaDraco Font-of-Blackmail-Material Malfoy'. A long but fitting name, and he thought it had a nice ring to it, really. "I'm assuming you've got questions, right?"

One day, Harry was confident, Malfoy would actually figure out that the pout and the red face did not, in fact, make him look threatening, except in a 'if you keep this up I'm going to go cry in a bathroom with an angsty ghost and then you'll feel sorry' sort of way.

"Yes. Like 'who are you' and 'why shouldn't I rip your tongues out and feed them to the house elves right now'?" Draco ground out.

"Um, well, because that would be gross," James said in a slow I'm-reasoning-with-a-madman tone, which he usually whipped out whenever Percy was around.

Malfoy's hand tightened around his wand until his knuckles went white from the pressure. Harry tensed, resigning himself to getting in the way of whatever spell the Death Eater might fling James' way.

Except James then added, "Also, it would be really messy. Not to mention, Kreacher and Winky told me they aren't actually all that keen on devouring human flesh. Apparently it's a little too gamey."

Even Draco's murderous rage fizzled in the face of the befuddled horror this inspired in James' audience. Harry tried to find the right words, but his mind had gone blank in self-defense. All he could think was that Ginny was so never, ever hearing about this. She'd get really sarcastic and start saying things about Harry's name-mongering ways coming back to haunt him, which was rich, considering she'd wanted to name all the kids after her favorite Martin the Muggle characters.

Fortunately, his godson was there to ask the awkward questions for him. "Oh my god, what have you done and who did you do it to?" Teddy demanded, aghast.

James flushed. "I was just a kid, all right, and Lily wouldn't stop crying and I thought--"

"You tried to feed your sister to a house elf?" Harry cried, shocked right out of his daze.

"Well, _yeah,_" James said, apparently confused by their astonishment, "Of course. I wouldn't now, obviously, but this was years ago and she was just this slobbery red-faced fiend-thing from hell that spewed and shat everywhere all the time and peed on me when I helped Mum change her diapers once--"

"Lily never peed on me," Al interjected proudly, casting an obnoxiously superior look at his older brother. Harry, who was fairly certain that he'd been peed on by half of Hogwarts' current population, glared enviously at his middle child.

"Yeah, well, that's more proof that she's a vicious monster who enjoys causing me pain," James said sulkily, coming uncomfortably close to echoing Harry's thoughts about most of the younger generation, particularly those bits of it with freckles or red hair.

"James," Harry said wearily, "I understand where you're coming from, but no feeding people to the house elves, all right?"

"It's not like I've made a habit of it!" James said, aggrieved. "B'sides, like I told you, they didn't even want to eat her. Even Kreacher said humans taste gross. Not good eating on us, y'know. He said he'd eat kneazle first. Preferably Crookshanks."

Harry stared wordlessly at his son for a while, but that was okay, because everyone else was staring at James, too.

"That's fascinating, James," Victoire said hollowly, a trapped look in her eyes. "Eurgh."

"Please get back to interrogating us," Scorpius begged his Fake-Father. "_Please_. James even volunteered! Take him away and ask him questions! Far, far away. For a very long time."

Draco, strangely, did not look thrilled by this suggestion.

"Just…tell me who you are," he said, darting nervous glances James' way. For a moment, Harry actually regretted Lily's absence; if she'd been with them, they'd have already irrevocably shattered Draco's mind, soul, and will to live, and long since been on their merry way. Where to, he wasn't sure, but still. There would be way-going.

"If we told you about us, we'd have to kill you," Scorpius said promptly, because he had a truly disturbing obsession with Muggle spy movies that Harry and his friends had foolishly indulged. Draco always got the funniest look on his face whenever Scorpius started talking about how ingenious Muggles were and how they made the neatest things.

"Kill me," Draco repeated blankly.

"Um. We're the ones unarmed in a prison cell," Al reminded his best friend patiently.

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Ignore them," Harry sighed, because watching Draco's sanity slowly fray before his eyes was oddly not as enjoyable in this world as it was at home. Possibly because this Draco Malfoy was still a Death Eater, not Al's self-proclaimed mentor and Teddy's cousin and Scorpius' adoring and criminally indulgent father. "The truth is, we're nothing particularly special or interesting. Just annoying."

"Speak for yourself," James said with a haughty sniff.

"Nothing special? The veritable explosion of power from the shop we found you in says something different," Draco said waspishly.

"Right, well, we're nothing particularly special—as long as you forget about the transdimensional travellers thing," Harry amended. He ignored the children's shocked stares—they must have thought he'd try to cover the whole 'not our dimension, folks' thing up, maybe strike a pose and lie bald-faced yet heroically to their captors. A reasonable enough assumption, really, except that he had no idea how long they'd be prisoner, and if the shopkeeper got himself captured and questioned, well.

Bilge'd witnessed everything, including Harry's epiphany of deductive genius, which made lying a little too dangerous. So Harry figured he might as well take the opportunity to build a little trust with the AlternaMalfoy. Voldemort wasn't exactly known for letting his prisoners out on good behavior, but hey, it was worth a try.

"Transdimensional travellers," Draco repeated blankly, obviously unimpressed by Harry's openness and honesty.

"Yeah. Go figure, right?" Teddy said, apparently trusting Harry to steer them right. _Despite_ having read Harry's unofficial biography. Now that was real faith, right there.

"It's not as fun as I thought it'd be," James added sadly. "I mean, aren't alternate realities supposed to have, like, dinosaurs and aliens and things? Couldn't we have gone to a dimension where all the girls are Veela nudists?"

"One day, I will hurt you," Victoire said.

"You aren't joking," Draco said, staring at Harry. "About being interdimensional…"

"Tourists," Al supplied helpfully. "Okay, unintentional tourists, but still."

Scorpius shuddered. "Tourists?" he repeated, the word dripping disdain. "Malfoys are not _tourists_, Al. Malfoys own the very ground they tread upon, regardless of where that ground might be or who has the actual deed to it."

Harry braced himself, but AlternaDraco's shrill screech still made him flinch. "Did you say 'Malfoys'?"

"What, are you blind or something?" demanded James "Tact Is Gross, Like Your Face" Potter. "He looks just like you, only not balding. Yet."

Harry felt his heart hit plummet. No, no—not even James would be so dim, so foolish…

Teddy let out a low, despairing groan. Al gaped at James, terror in his eyes. Harry didn't dare even look at Malfoy.

"You do not say the b-word!" Scorpius hissed, panic in his gaze...but it was too late_,_ too late.


	15. In Which I Hate Writing Characters With

Disclaimer: I own nothing. For seriously, yo.

Sorry for the wait—in the past few months, I've dropped out of The College of Hell and Angst, moved out of my parents' house to the East Coast, found an apartment, discovered Fullmetal Alchemist and Bleach, and started a job. So, been a bit busy.

This chapter is mostly unfunny, because for some reason, I am not getting the humor vibe from characters who aren't Harry or his kids. Woe.

* * *

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: In Which The Author Really Freaking Hates Writing Characters With The Same First Name

* * *

Lily really should have brought the girl to the Order, and she knew it. They could have questioned the child efficiently and thoroughly (even if, granted, their interrogation of the boy had been a miserable failure on all counts). But they could have learned more about both the girl's supposed family and the Death Eater raid on the shop. It would have been the responsible thing to do, the smart thing to do.

But Lily wasn't feeling particularly logical at the moment, and so she hid herself and her captive away in the Shrieking Shack—near enough to Hogwarts to go running to Albus or Minerva for help if something untoward happened, and far enough away to be left alone.

She wasn't anywhere near convinced that 'Harry Potter' was telling the truth about himself or his origins—but she wasn't entirely willing to dismiss his story, either. And the girl—well. She had to know something.

* * *

Twenty minutes with the kid was all it took for Lily to be absolutely convinced that the alternate universe thing was no joke or trick or trap. The girl—her namesake, she was truly touched to discover—was no Death Eater in disguise, anymore than she was some sort of brainwashed tool. Lily Luna Potter knew very well exactly who she was, where she'd come from, and what she intended to do.

"They'll need rescuing," the girl told Lily matter-of-factly, once they'd both stopped accusing each other of being Death Eaters long enough to work out the details of their current situation. "If they'd just gotten Dad, I'd be, like, 'Whatevs, fools,' because he's Chuck-Norris badass, you dig? And Victoire's got mad skills."

"Mad skills," Lily repeated, feeling rather faint.

"For reals, Fake Grandma."

"Fake Grandma," Lily said, continuing to feel rather faint. Not to mention, a lot less soppy about the whole namesake thing.

"If the shoe fits. Like a glove," Lily-the-Younger said with a shrug. "But anyway, Victoire and my Dad, they'd be okay on their own. But the boys, well, Al's not a complete idiot all of the time, and Teddy's got wicked hair mojo and can blind evil from ten paces with his fashion anti-sense, but that's pretty much the best that can be said for 'em. They're gonna get in Dad's way." She took a deep breath, and intoned, with all due drama and posing, "So it's up to us to save them."

Lily blinked at her Not-Quite-Granddaughter, who dropped out of the official Intrepid Hero Stance C (described in detail in the Auror Trainee Manual) and casually added, "Or, you know, we could go to the Order. Whatever floats your magic carpet." The girl looked suddenly shifty, and quickly added, "Not that Mum got us all illegal magic carpets two years ago, or that I'd know anything about how to make them float. Because that's a minor felony. And Dad certainly didn't make us bribe him with good behavior and proper grammar for a full two weeks so he wouldn't take the carpets away. Not that we ever had magic carpets in the first place." She tapered off a little helplessly, then rallied with a strong, "Yo."

"I really could not care less about your criminally-insane family's stockpile of contraband carpeting," Lily sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes.

"That hurts, Fake Grandma," Little Lily said in tones of relief. "That really hurts."

The Order. Lily winced, feeling terribly disloyal for even considering keeping them out of this. But…

The Order had gotten too used to cutting their losses, and far too pragmatic in matters like this one. Or, well, not exactly like this one, because alternate versions of her dead son and her dead son's family didn't usually drop by and get captured by the Dark Lord. Similar situations had arisen in the past, though—captured agents, hostages taken by the Death Eaters—and the Order had accustomed themselves to making sacrifices. They were fighting a losing war, after all, and the only reason any of them were still alive to be fighting it was because Voldemort was clever and secure enough in his immortality to be patient.

Everyone knew that if Voldemort were only a little less patient, a little less concerned with what happened to Hogwarts, the school would already be firmly in his control--and with it, the last bastion of freedom in Magical Europe.

The Order was an underground organization at the best of times, but now they were outright in hiding. For years, they'd been reduced to launching occasional feeble, largely useless efforts that were just enough to keep the spirit of their rebellion alive. Breaking into a Death Eater stronghold to steal a few potential Death Eater spies away from Voldemort himself…the Order would never go for it. There was just too much risk, too many potential casualties for an already depleted force to handle.

The Order's main priority was maintaining nominal control of Hogwarts; confronting Voldemort over a couple of strangers wasn't even vaguely in line with that priority. Lily tried to tell her namesake this, as gently and simply as possible.

The younger Lily was not impressed.

"Wow. Can you say _epic fail_? No wonder You-Know-Who's totes pwning your posteriors," the girl scoffed. "Honestly, you're all just going to give up 'cause he's evil and super-powered and immortal and practically untouchable and basically in charge of the entire world already?"

"Well," Lily said, staring, "When you put it that way…"

The younger Potter scowled, and Lily was relieved to see that her Not-Granddaughter was at least smart enough to know when she was being mocked. "So you can't kill him, fine. Killing's not the only way to stop someone from becoming king of the universe. I gotta say, Fake Grandma, this kinda of lack of imagination should not be possible in the Wizarding World. It's not like you've got logical thought to fall back on."

"It's not exactly that easy," Lily said sharply, before she forced herself to take a nice, deep, calming breath. She was a grown woman, a grown woman with grown children, and this ignorant little girl couldn't be more than eleven or twelve. She wasn't about to lose her temper and start shouting at someone young enough to be—well, she wasn't going to yell at someone who, in another world, apparently _was _her granddaughter.

Another world. That was important to remember, too, that the girl was from another universe, one where—if Lily was judging things correctly—they either hadn't had to deal with Voldemort, or at least not a Voldemort powerful enough or evil enough to really be a problem.

"I understand why you're upset," Lily told the girl, keeping her voice carefully controlled, "and that it's hard to maintain a sense of perspective when it's your family in danger, but it's just not practical or even fair to expect others to risk their lives on something so hopeless."

"What, are we still on that? Who cares about the Order anymore?" the girl replied, blinking. "I've moved on, lady. I'm about two countries over from that by now, at, like, walking-pace. Jeez. Keep up."

"You are," Lily said, staring.

"Well, yeah. What, I'm supposed to keep whining about a bunch of strangers being lametards? Please. That's why God made Blogging. And why Aunt Hermione made WiziJournal."

"WiziJournal." Lily wasn't as disconnected from the Muggle world as all that, and had a horrified feeling that she knew precisely what WiziJournal was--and the petty evils such a thing could generate.

"Yeah. You know, she actually thought teenagers would use a magical blogging site to communicate ideas and exchange cultural information? To, I dunno, break down the barriers of ignorance and stupidity or something. Then she finally logged on herself last year, read through a few of the more popular journals, and spent the next week crying over her sins and asking everyone 'What have I done? My god, the poetry alone--what have I done?'" The girl smiled reminiscently and added, "Then I showed her and James some Marvin the Muggle slash communities. Oh, man, you've never seen a manipped picture until you've seen a manipped _wizarding_ picture. James wanted to Obliviate me and then himself, but Aunt Hermione told him he'd have to get used to the idea 'cause she's pretty sure Al and Scorpius are gonna get married by the time they're eighteen."

"Uh," Lily said, overwhelmed and lost and feeling very, very alone. "What?"

The girl waved a dismissive hand. "Never mind, your loss for being, uh, fake and otherworldly and stuff. So your Order is, I dunno, the Order of the Posers or whatever. All this means is that we've gotta save Dad and the rest of 'em ourselves, and then they will all owe me for life. Which is cool—I like it when people owe me for life. I'll have Teddy giving me half his allowance for _years_, and I'd like to see Dad try and ground me next time I eOwl RPS about him and Scorpius' dad to the Auror eOwl list. Which, ew, but as long as _I_ don't have to read it... And anyway, it's Aunt Hermione's fault for making WiziJournal in the first place, and Mum's for daring me to do it."

"Save them ourselves," Lily repeated--she was getting a little tired of parroting the younger Lily every five seconds, but the girl just kept spouting the most outrageous, nonsensical, vaguely terrifying things. On the other hand, Lily thought she was also getting better at ignoring whatever didn't seem absolutely relevant to the current situation, which was most of what her Not-Granddaughter said.

Lily was beginning to doubt her Not-Son's parenting abilities.

And also genetics, because no one with Evans blood could possibly be this dim. She purposefully did not think about Petunia. Or Dudley. Or Dudley's spawn. Or her own children. Lily was actually quite accomplished at ignoring evidence--it was impossible not to be, when you married into the Marauders.

"That's what I just said," Lily-the-Younger said, annoyed. "Pay attention, Fake Grandma. Are you sure we're related, 'cause you're kinda slow. And I hate to break it to you, but that 'slow but steady wins the race' thing is a dirty dirty lie. The bastard who rigs the other brooms and buys himself a Firebolt 8000 wins the race every time. Trufax, it's been tested, and James wouldn't talk to me or Scorpius for _days_, which is pretty impressive for him. Boy holds a grudge like a sieve holds water, gen'rally. So, anyway, we should get Snape in on the action."

"I think you're trying to make my brain melt," Lily-The-Not-Young-But-Most-Certainly-Not-_Old_-As-Such observed, but she already knew she'd do it, try to save the alternate Harry and his children herself. She'd never forgive herself, not ever, if she lost her son again. Just…let him go, because it was safer and easier and he wasn't really her son, anyway.

"Maybe I am, but it's nothing personal. Bad habit. So, you in or not?" her Sort-Of-Granddaughter demanded, hands fisted on her hips. For the first time, Lily really looked at the girl, saw more than the red hair and the freckles and the gleam of Unadulterated Iniquity in her eyes (she tried to think the words in lowercase, but her brain rebelled).

The child was so young, and so determined, and so terribly unprepared.

"Come on, Fake Grandma, we don't have all day! Chop chop, decision-making time is _now,_ geezer-lady. Geezette. Whichever. Geezessa?"

The misty haze of sentimentality withdrew as quickly as it had come, and Lily told herself that strangling her Not-Grandchild would not actually solve any of their current problems. She wasn't sure she entirely believed herself, but she was good at giving people the benefit of the doubt these days.

"I'm in," Lily announced, however reluctantly. "Of course I'm in. And you're right, Severus would be an immense help, and I'll definitely talk to him as soon as I can. But I'm afraid you're not--I can't let you put yourself in that kind of peril. Or any kind of peril, really."

The girl's eyes narrowed dangerously. And then, slowly, horribly, she smiled. "If that's what you think is best," she said, with a sweetness that Lily _knew_ masked some kind of virulent, slow-acting, painful, fatal, and otherwise adjective-ridden poison.

Chills went down her spine, but she wasn't about to show less spine than a pint-sized girl who said 'for reals'. "It's what I _know_ is best," she said firmly, refusing to be swayed. "I'll recruit Severus and my husband, and we'll handle this ourselves."

"Because you're adults," the girl agreed, a small false-looking smile still playing on her freckled, demonic little face. "And this isn't a matter for kids."

"That's right," Lily said, vowing to keep a very, very close eye on her young not-granddaughter. She was clearly not a child to be trusted.

"Then I'm'na go, I dunno, chill in the corner and be seen but not heard while the big people talk, then," the girl said. She looked placid, but placid like water on a mild summer day, right before the ominous background music starts up and a giant killer shark leaps out and eats your face.

Lily told herself she was imagining things, that the girl would be best off, er, chilling, and that she'd clearly let Sirius talk her into watching Jaws a few too many times. Purebloods had extremely predictable tastes in Muggle media, and Marauders even more so.

She also told herself that the phrase 'chillin' like a villain' had no bearing whatsoever on the current situation, but that was a little harder for her to believe, especially when the girl's smile just kept getting wider and more innocent. Merlin. If she kept being so paranoid, she'd wind up as the next Mad-Eye Moody. Only, you know, considerably prettier, and hopefully a little less excitable about spies.

Maybe her namesake was actually being reasonable. Maybe the girl was truly smart enough to recognize that a child couldn't do anything in this sort of predicament, and that her family's rescue was best left in older, wiser, more experienced and slightly wrinkled hands.

Yeah, Lily thought gloomily, shaking her head. And while she was at it, maybe all Voldemort had ever really wanted was a hug and a pony.

* * *

Urgh. Next chapter will be better.


	16. In Which Everyone Is Confused

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing.

This is going to sound kind of sad and egotistical, but sometimes I'll read a quote from this story in a review, and I'll be, like, "Oh, haha, that's funny, I should've thought of that. Wait. That's actually a quote? When did I write that shit?" Uh, I may have spent the last fifteen minutes trying and failing to reply to the reviews I've neglected over my months-long cyber-hermitude. Whoops.

This chapter had none of my usual tangents, at the start. A couple vague references to Harry being annoyed by his Aurors, a line about his hair being kind of messy, but that was the sum total of vague and unnecessary background info. The chapter was also, like, one thousand three hundred words. What happened? IT'S A MYSTERY.

* * *

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: In Which Everyone Is Confused. Including The Author.

* * *

By the time Draco finally stormed off, pink-faced and furious, Harry was ready and willing to sell his very soul to make the other man stop shrieking. Dear Merlin, it was just a bit of hair!

And quite frankly, Harry thought that receding hairline or not, Malfoy had the better deal. _His_ hair probably never ate combs and occasionally small animals, then spat out the bones during the night so his wife would find them nestled happily in _her_ hair when she woke in the morning. It had taken him and Ginny ten vicious fights, a visit to a marriage counselor, and two appointments with a specialist at St. Mungo's before they figured out it wasn't actually his hair's fault, but the result of a rather devious and esoteric curse from a Death Eater he'd spent weeks tracking down after the war.

Who actually thought up spells like that, anyway? It was like someone in ancient times had transfigured the Wizarding World's collective common sense into an excess of imagination and petty cruelty, and no one had ever figured out the counter-spell.

That sounded worryingly plausible, actually.

Of course, the Mad Mane Curse wouldn't work on just _anyone's_ hair, as Ginny had been quick to point out—to Harry, to her brothers, to the whole damn Auror Corps, and the entire damn media. "It says right here that one of the requirements is that the victim have 'naturally aggressive follicles'. So it's still your fault."

"My follicles are not aggressive," Harry had protested, but everyone had been too busy pointing and laughing to listen. Hell, even Su Li and Baddock had cackled merrily about the tables being turned, sending the upper echelon of the Ministry into a brief, frenzied panic before Hermione was able to confirm that their Monday night 'surveillance' hadn't actually been discovered, and that the scheming partners' vague allegations had pretty much been a paranoid shot in the dark.

Which brought Harry back to hating Slytherins, their scheming, and their stupid shrill shrieking over their stupid shiny hair. Or lack thereof.

"Why did you have to say the b-word?" Scorpius demanded, sounding about as put-out as Harry felt. He was watching James with baleful eyes, hugging his knees to his chest in a vain effort to comfort himself. Harry thought about calling him over, slinging an arm around his shoulders and saying something sage-sounding and nonsensical to calm him down, in true Dumbledorean style, but somehow he doubted Scorpius would be too receptive to the old Incomprehensible Mentor Routine™.

James looked chagrined, but not very. "Look, I swear I didn't know he'd go so--"

"Apeshit?" Teddy said dryly. "_Bat_shit? Guano?"

"_Language_. Enough with the shi—er, animal defecation, Teddy," Harry said wearily. Victoire mouthed apologetically, 'He gets like this when he needs a nap', as if Harry didn't know that already, from two decades of raising the damn kid. No one could do crabby like Teddy did crabby.

As if to prove it, Teddy shot Harry one of his patented 'for Merlin's sake, I'm twenty years old, you can stop fucking censoring my goddamn language, asshole. And while I'm at it, shit. Shitshitshit_damn_shit. So there, and nyah, and **animal shit**' glares.

Aloud, his beloved godson said, "Oh, sorry. Bat_crap_."

"Mature, Teddy, very mature," Harry muttered. He was happier than ever that Lily wasn't around, because he didn't have a single doubt in his mind she'd have asked if 'Batcrap' was what it was called when Bruce Wayne took a dump.

"I had a traumatic childhood and adolescence," Teddy insisted sulkily. "I'm entitled."

"Ah, yes. The endless trauma of having a large, loving family, a doting girlfriend—"

"I do not _dote,_" Victoire sniffed.

"—a good education, a couple of vaults packed with galleons, friends devoted enough to be seen with you even when you wear that vomit-orange plaid shirt, and a magical power that ensures you've never once in your life had to worry about zits," Harry finished with a flourish, ignoring his niece's blatant lie.

Teddy pouted, but it was half-hearted at best—no doe eyes, and not even that practiced little flinch of betrayal that just screamed 'how could you mock my inner torment so?' "The man is very sensitive about appearances, is all I'm trying to say," he muttered, lower lip quivering.

"Explains why he can't stand you," Scorpius agreed.

Al wasn't listening to the bickering at all, and Victoire had lost interest once she realized she wasn't the topic of discussion. Both looked deep in thought, or, alternately, kind of like stunned lemmings. Sadly, their thinking faces took more after Percy's than Hermione's.

Harry wondered if they were going to share their ideas with the class anytime soon, but decided to leave them to their cogitation; a person could hardly be friends with Hermione for nearly three decades without knowing just how hazardous an untimely interruption to the wool-gathering process could be.

A little nudge in the right direction couldn't hurt, though. Anything to make Scorpius stop detailing, point by point, every single way Teddy's current outfit was a perversion of and crime against fashion, nature, life, the universe, and everything.

"I'm a little surprised we're all in one piece, honestly," he mused, and smiled when he saw Victoire's head snap up. Sometimes, he really did think she'd make a good Auror. Until he remembered that Victoire was the one to create The Spell, and then he mostly just thought he should count himself lucky that she wasn't into world domination.

His niece didn't disappoint. "I was just thinking that!" she agreed. "I mean, he was holding that wand the entire time like he was trying to squeeze the magic out of it, but he never cursed us once—he didn't even hex James' mouth closed when he was blathering on about house elves eating people, and I've seen people do a lot worse with considerably less provocation."

James glowered.

"Your point?" Harry encouraged, remembering his days of leading the DA with a great deal of fondness. Which required a little selective amnesia on his part, but hell, who really needed to remember Zacharias Smith's ugly mug or Marietta Edgecombe's attack of connect-the-dots acne or Umbridge's relentless sadism or Malfoy running around with that stupid Inquisitorial Squad?

"I can't imagine a Death Eater would have that much patience or self-control," Victoire soldiered on, easily ignoring James' sad attempt at a death stare. Harry was embarrassed on his son's behalf—on a scale of 'kick to the groin' up to 'instant heart failure', the kid's glare probably rated somewhere around 'refreshing tingling feeling'.

"Maybe Malfoy's further down the food chain than we thought," Harry said, frowning, ignoring Scorpius' '_ahem'_. The kid's filial loyalty was pretty much just a reflex these days, anyway. "The really subservient ones were sometimes too afraid to do _anything_ without a direct order, as I recall. Or…maybe he wasn't supposed to be in here and didn't want anyone to find out—or maybe he's gone and annoyed Volde…You Know Who, that is, and he's treading carefully…"

It was kind of embarrassing, how little he actually knew about the Death Eaters and their whole set-up. He'd always been more focused on the hex-everyone-and-ask-questions-later side of things during the war.

If his Aurors were around to hear him, they'd laugh themselves silly and then sic Su Li and Baddock on him. The two of them would probably lecture him for three hours on the importance of doing background research, quiz him on his knowledge of the sociological implications of Lucius Malfoy blowing his nose, and then beat him to death with Baddock's secret love child or something when he got it wrong.

God, he hoped Ron didn't erase any of All My Aurors—er, the highly classified surveillance footage—while he was gone.

Harry told himself sternly that he had more pressing concerns than insubordinate subordinates and missing his traditional Monday night entertainment. And it wasn't like Hermione wouldn't catch him up on everything, anyway. Under the guise of keeping him informed about a possible threat within his department, of course, though she'd never been able to adequately explain how Baddock's heartbreak upon finding Su Li in bed with her newest love interest (almost certainly an insane criminal mastermind with a mysterious connection to Baddock's recently discovered long-lost twin, the one with glasses, not the one with the kilt) posed a danger to the Ministry.

"He forgot about Scorpius," Al interjected, troubled. "When James said the b-word. Mister Malfoy just sort of flounced away--"

"Hey," Scorpius said dutifully, if not with a great deal of spirit. "You're sullying the Malfoy name, commoner. And he did not forget about me. No one forgets a Malfoy. He was simply overcome with rage."

"Sorry. Not flounced away, then—left," Al allowed, ever the diplomat. "Left dramatically, yet in an _extremely manly_ manner, Scorpius, so stop giving me that look. Wait. _Commoner?_"

"Yes."

Albus stared at his best friend for a long moment, then shook his head and said, "The point is, he left without even asking anything about Scorpius being his sort-of son from another world. Which is generally the kind of thing people have questions about. Even if they're overcome with rage. I'd assume, anyway. Er."

"'Sort-of son from another world.' I really hope we won't be here long enough to get used to those kinds of designations," Victoire sighed, missing the point spectacularly.

Al forged bravely on, ignoring the interruption. "And I know he's…affected by the b-word, even in our world, but the Mister Malfoy I know isn't that absent-minded. A bit melodramatic, yeah," (which was, Harry thought, rather like calling the Nile a bit wet or Percy a little verbose), "but he would never, ever have forgotten something as big as his, well, insta-son."

"Did you just imply that I am overweight?" Scorpius demanded, outraged. "I am trim. I am _svelte. _I am--"

"Full of shi—cra—hot air," Teddy said, casting Harry a 'See, I did what you asked, and I can't believe how lame it was' look. Harry wasn't bothered, though, as he was very, very used to getting that look from everyone he knew under the age of twenty, and most of his Aurors as well. He assumed it was a maturity thing.

"Insta-son? Well. Better than 'sort-of son from another world'," Victoire judged, unfazed by the fact that no one was actually listening to her. "But only marginally."

"I'll have you know I am full of _nothing_," Scorpius snapped, and thankfully continued before anyone could take advantage of that amazingly beautiful set-up. Even Harry was tempted to mutter something like, 'Well, you're blond, after all, it's to be expected', though Luna would smile eerily at him in a really worrying way if she ever found out. "I am the _perfect_ size for my age."

"But just, you know, on the short and pudgy side of perfect," James offered peaceably.

Al glared at them all, unimpressed with the peanut gallery. Hah, Harry thought a touch bitterly, try debriefing a roomful of senior Aurors and Unspeakables some time, kid. The Potter clan was _easy_ in comparison.

There was nothing more painful to watch than a war of wits wherein no one was actually equipped for battle. Baddock's insults were so convoluted no one could actually figure them out, Ron just got red and blustery, and Su Li—well, she'd long ago mastered the art of the esoteric put-down. She couldn't really offend anyone, because no one but her partner knew what the hell she meant when she called the Unspeakables a 'veritable recreation of the First Foul Wizard Gamjiggs and his Dread Defense Team during the latter half of his career with the Dark League'. Of course, then Baddock would give Li this adoring 'You so bad, girl' smile, and everyone would have to go elsewhere and be queasy for a while.

As for the Unspeakables…well, Draco thought calling Harry 'Potty' and Baddock 'Badcock' was the height of cleverness, and Padma Patil mostly just criticized Ron's chronic inability to properly fill out Procedural Forms 1830B-2 and 1004CF-9, whatever the hell those were. (Procedural Forms were, Harry had patiently and repeatedly explained to Kingsley, the sort of thing that happened to Other People. "Kind of like proper procedure itself," Kingsley generally replied with a dark glare, and Harry always nodded, pleased that he and his boss understood each other so well.)

"_So_," Albus gritted out, aware that he was losing his audience but determined to see his line of thought through to the bitter end, "either this universe works in strange new ways we don't get at all--"

"Or Fake Malfoy had a good reason to leave without asking questions," Harry finished, feeling a sick little thrill at striking an appropriately grim note. Getting to make the occasional ominous yet utterly unhelpful declaration was the best damn part about being Head Auror, as far as he was concerned. It was the one thing he and Kingsley actually agreed on.

"Uh," Teddy said, looking a bit bashful. "Sounds like it's time for a 'Dun dun _dunnn'_. So. You know. Dun dun _dunnn._"

"Very good, love," Victoire said approvingly, all but patting him on the head and feeding him a biscuit.

"Just doing my part for the team," Teddy said modestly.

Scorpius rolled his eyes, which was a relief, because Harry was getting tired of being the one with the chronic eyestrain.

* * *

Lily cursed herself for a fool the moment she realized what calling in James and Severus really meant for the hastily-dubbed Operation Rescue The Crazy Not-Potters.

Number one, that they'd spend more time arguing with each other than in coming up with a plan. Number two, that James would storm off in a huff the moment Lily actually agreed with anything Severus said, up to and including the statement 'the ceiling is rather up today, isn't it'. Oh, he'd come back after about fifteen minutes of sulking outside, but still, nothing was as irritating as a pouty Potter. And number three…

Well, number three was taking place before her very eyes.

"Well, Snape, now that it's just us," the little girl in the corner said brightly the moment James disappeared through the door, off to sulk up a storm because Lily had agreed with Severus' opening statement that it was, indeed, afternoon, if not necessarily a good one. "I should be in on this."

Severus eyed the girl coolly, then fell into a peculiar rabbit-confronted-by-predator sort of stillness when she flashed her teeth at him in a cruel mockery of a smile.

"Regardless of what you've no doubt heard, I'm not in the habit of putting children in mortal peril," Severus snapped, recovering magnificently from his momentary lapse. "And it's _Mister_ Snape to you."

Lily the Younger sheathed her teeth at that, thankfully. "Yeah, I get that you're more the silent—er, okay, the _snide_ protector type. But I'm a Potter," the girl argued, with all the smug triumph of one with infallible logic on her side. "Does it really count as child endangerment if it's a Potter you're putting in peril?"

Severus actually hesitated. "You make a good point," he allowed. "Alliterative, too." Lily was amused, at least until she realized that he wasn't just being facetious. Then she was mostly horrified.

"Severus, don't you even think about--"

"Why should we include you, DevilSpawn?" he interrupted her, staring down the considerable length of his nose at the younger, shorter, Weasley-er Lily. "Convince me that you won't be a hindrance."

"Severus! Don't be ridiculous—" Lily began, but apparently it was her destiny to never again finish a full sentence.

"First off, 'cause if you don't let me come I'll find a way to go off on my own anyway, 'cause I'm half Potter, half Weasley and a little bit Black and Malfoy and Delacour by association. And, also, _all_ ninja-badass." She nodded to herself decisively, and while Lily was tempted to laugh incredulously, Severus actually seemed vaguely impressed. Well, not with the girl's alleged ninja-badassness, but certainly with the rest.

Then Lily's Not-Granddaughter went for the figurative kill. "Point is, I'm going. If I go alone, you lose all gloating privileges. But I can help you out in, oh, loads of ways." Lily was really learning to hate that crafty little smile. "I'm small and I can get into odd places, for one. Get out of them, too, which is even more important. And I know my family better than anyone in this world, so I can keep 'em from messing things up for us. Which they will, because even Dad can only do so much to keep us outta trouble, or we wouldn't be on a first-name basis with the entire Obliviator Squad."

"Obliviators," Lily repeated faintly.

"S'what I said, woman," the girl agreed. "Humorless bunch, y'know. After Victoire registered The Spell they wanted to take her in and erase it from her mind completely. Can you _credit_ that shiznit?" She didn't wait for an answer before saying, "Yeah, s'what I _thought. _ But Dad said no one was mucking about with anyone's brains, and Aunt Hermione got all legalish at them for a while, and Victoire went on the lam for, like, three minutes, until she decided fugitiving was bad for the complexion."

Keeping up with her Not-Granddaughter's train of thought, Lily thought dazedly, was like chasing after three snitches at once, on a field swarming with Bludgers. In the rain. Blindfolded.

"Anyway," Lily the Younger finished, in a this-is-my-trump-card-and-it's-totes-a-winner voice, "all you really need to know is that I have a way of being invisible that no one in this universe can possibly detect."

"Undetectable," Severus said flatly.

"Believe it," the girl agreed boisterously, then winced. "Uh. We'll just pretend I didn't pull a Naruto, yeah?"

Lily wasn't entirely sure what that meant, so saw no harm in nodding. Severus, on the other hand, looked like he was storing away the information for later research and mocking.

Invisibility. Well, that _was_ one hell of a trump card. Still, though… "You're a child," Lily said, quietly and furiously. She was determined that this would be one of those debates which she'd win, regardless of how well the opponent argued, by repeatedly stating a single fact in a dignified version of the classic la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you tone. A mother-versus-child argument, in other words.

"Okay, you found me out. I admit it, I'm a kid," the girl said, rolling her eyes so exaggeratedly that Lily almost winced in sympathy. "Well, guess what. So are Al and Scorpius and James. And they're my family. That means _I'm_ the only one who gets to torment them."

"This will be a delicate operation," Severus said slowly, before Lily could begin to respond. "You will have to follow every instruction we give you, regardless of whether or not you agree. If we tell you to leave, you leave, no questions asked, no argument, no hesitation. Do you understand?"

Lily turned to him, pure murder (of the messy, painful kind) in her eyes, but she paused when he glanced sideways at her and cocked one eyebrow in a Snape-ish approximation of a conspiratorial wink.

The girl smiled evilly, missing the look. "Oh, yeah. Of course. Totes," she agreed, which, for some strange reason, did not reassure Lily of the girl's sincerity.

But if Severus had a plan, as his not-wink seemed to suggest…she supposed she could play along, for now. Give in slowly and gracelessly for the look of things, and then pull Severus somewhere private and figure out what the hell he was playing at.

"Can't you just teach us your method of invisibility?" she tried, one last time. Undetectable invisibility was a good hook, she'd give her Not-Granddaughter that much, but…it still wasn't enough to justify putting a ten-year-old in that kind of danger. No hook was good enough for that, as far as she was concerned. Aside from total emotional, mental, and physical indestructibility—and even then, only _maybe_.

Lily the Younger eyed her incredulously. "Uh, no. Like, capslock 'no'. Underlined and in bold, baby. I mean, not 'baby'. Grandma. Fake Grandma. _Whatevs._"

"…Capswhat?"

The girl blinked at them, slow and kind of bovine in her incomprehension of their incomprehension. "You know, like with computers? PC and Mac? Capslock? Big letters? Am I getting through here at all, peeps?"

Lily and Severus exchanged an uncertain look. Sure, they'd both grown up in the Muggle world, but that had been in the 1970s, and neither had spent much time there since graduating Hogwarts. Lily knew about computers, of course, and what she knew could fill a book—but it would be a small book with large letters and pretty pretty pictures on every page.

"This is bogus. Like, heinous bogus," Mini-Lily groaned. "Need a freaking translator to speak to you people." That was, Lily thought, so outrageously hypocritical that she couldn't even begin to voice an objection. "But the point is, I am most emphatically not telling you anything if it stops me from going after m'Dad and Al."

"Just them?" Severus said sardonically.

"And those other ones, too, but it's tiring saying all their names and they aren't as awesome as Dad and Al."

"Don't you think their lives are a little more important that you getting your way?" Lily demanded, mildly alarmed by the way her Not-Granddaughter and Severus seemed to be continually surfing the same mental wavelength. Which was not, she realized too late, a mental picture she really needed. Argh. "What if having you there puts them in more danger? You're young, untrained, and entirely new to this world. Don't you think that matters?"

Her Not-Granddaughter considered this carefully. "Well," she said after a few moments, with a one-shouldered shrug. "Not really. Not when getting my way means that I rescue them from the clutching grasp of evil men in stupid masks. With your help, of course."

Lily sighed, hoping this show of capitulation was all part of some ridiculous Slytherin plot that didn't involve her Not-Granddaughter going on a dangerous rescue mission—and not some ridiculous Slytherin plot that involved getting her off her guard so her Not-Granddaughter could run off and take down Lord Voldemort and his followers in defense of bragging rights and sisterly teasing.

It was just so hard to tell with ridiculous Slytherin plots.

"I really don't like this, Severus," she settled for grumbling.

"I, on the other hand, rather do. Multiple Potters in mortal danger," Severus replied with a relish that couldn't be entirely for show, and Lily the Younger laughed delightedly, practically _beaming_.

"You're kind of awesomesauce, you know that?" the girl told Severus, to general confusion and dismay—Severus Snape did not make small children laugh. He made them cry, and whimper, and snot up like the Apocalypse was on its way and they wanted one last good sneeze before the end, but not _laugh._ "Totes hiptastic."

Lily gaped. Severus would have, too, if years of habit hadn't kept his face locked into its default scowl.

James came slouching back in, then, glowering around at everyone—fortunately too late to hear a Potter commit the ultimate betrayal of sincerely complimenting Severus Snape. Before Lily could say a word (or thirty, most of them regarding his childishness and refusal to cooperate with his peers), the younger Lily called out, "Hey, Fake Granddude. Snape here says we shouldn't include me on the mission."

"He does, does he? Of course she's going, Snivellus—I know it's hard for you, but do try not to be such an idiot," James said automatically, glaring at Snape.

Lily clapped a hand over her eyes and groaned. Why, why, _why_ hadn't she taken Remus up on his shy offer of a date back in fourth year? She could have married someone intelligent and gentle and kind. Sure, there was the werewolf thing, but hell, it wasn't like she never felt like ripping people to shreds and howling at the moon.

Severus turned away slightly, so no one could see his face soften and contort in that peculiar, painful-looking way it always did when he wasn't entirely in hate with the world. The demon child watched with a pleased smirk, and Lily came to the incredible conclusion that the girl was actually trying to make Snape smile.

James paused as his tiny slow-moving tortoise of a brain finally registered what their Not-Granddaughter had actually told him, and his glare faded into a look of total confusion.

"Wait, what?"

Lily sighed.

* * *

So. Uh. Say--hypothetically, of course--that I was writing a Harry Potter/Gundam Wing crossover (shutupiknowican'thelpit). Say, hypothetically, that it's about, oh, sixty thousand words long (isaidshutup). Would anyone be interested in reading?


	17. In Which Voldemort Gets A Taste Of The G

Disclaimer: Is it wrong that I kind of want to write a Discworld fanfic just so I can make a horrible pun about DISClaimers? Yeah, I thought so.

I know, right? A new chapter, and you didn't even have to wait half a year to get it! Whatever is the world coming to, I ask you.

So. Remember that Gundam Wing crossover I may or may not be writing? The one that may or may not be sixty thousand words long, and that I may or may not post for your entertainment-slash-horror? Hypothetically, if it were to be, say, HarryHeero oriented, with background GinnyWufei, would you burn me with burning fire?

* * *

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: In Which Voldemort Gets A Taste Of The Good Life

* * *

Voldemort had not gotten better-looking with age. Eurgh. A universe or two of eurgh, in fact. Harry was bizarrely pleased that he now had the personal experience to say that with certainty.

Gosh, he thought with a small shudder. With looks like that, who _wouldn't_ want to live forever?

Harry was suddenly and profoundly grateful that he'd had Teddy morph into Voldemort throughout his kids' childhoods to show them what would happen to them if they didn't obey him and Ginny. It'd worked like a charm from the initial Incurable-Snake-Face-Is-What-Awaits-If-You-Don't-Eat-Your-Broccoli demonstration right up through the Don't-Do-Drugs-Or-You-Will-All-Die-Alone-And-Noseless speech, but failed when he lost his patience and tried to tell them they'd go evil if they didn't clean their rooms once a week.¹

_That_ particular failure was still bitterly remembered by the older members of the extended Potter-Weasley clan as The-Time-Harry-Blew-It-For-All-Of-Us. The younger generation just referred to it, thanks to dearest Lils, as Dad-Slash-Uncle-Harry's-Moment-Of-Truly-Epic-Fail.

Harry, on the other hand, mostly just remembered what he'd found in his younger son's closet all of five minutes later. The resulting window-rattling confrontation was etched forever into his memory, mostly because it resulted in Ginny's first attempt to go on strike from being a Potter without actually filing for divorce ("Ginny Potter is a stupid name, anyway. Almost as stupid as the names you insisted we give our poor children,"--"Well, it was better than naming them Humphrey, Mudd, and Giggles!"--"Shut up, Harry, those are classic names from quality literature!"--"_Martin the Mad Muggle is not quality literature_!"), but also partially because of the sheer _Albus_-_Severus_ness of the entire situation.

The point was, Voldeteddy (or, as Ginny insisted, Teddemort) had kept nearly the entire clan of Weasley-Potter children in line for years, and now his little darlings were so used to those gleaming red eyes and that lipless mouth that they weren't fazed at all at finding themselves face-to-pasty-pasty-face with the Dark Lord. Nothing was less conducive to survival than unthinking terror, after all—except maybe unthinking bravado.

Then again, Victoire also looked distinctly unimpressed—and Bill and Fleur had gone with the standard 'if you don't eat your broccoli, you get no dessert' route for their eldest. She'd been a little too old, by the time Harry thought of Voldeteddy, to honestly believe that her eyes would turn red if she didn't stop correcting her professors mid-lecture, or that her hair would fall out if she--how had Bill put it? Oh, right, 'canoodled with boys'.

Not that the lack of Voldeteddy in Victoire's youth excused her parents from being unimaginative sods when it came to child-rearing--but then, Harry had been assured several times that it took a special kind of mind to come up with something like Voldeteddemort. ("A criminally creative mind," Kingsley had rumbled suspiciously, one eyebrow twitching in a distinct 'Admit it, you've been moonlighting as a cat burglar, Mister Potter, haven't you' sort of way.

"Creatively criminal, I think you mean," Harry had replied as urbanely as he possibly could, which wasn't very, as he hadn't gotten to know Scorpius or Astoria at that point.

"Stop giving me that look, Potter. Has it occurred to you that I wouldn't have to constantly question your motivations and activities like this if you ever actually went by the rulebook?"

"The _what_ book? I'm sorry, sir, it's just that my entirely involuntary selective hearing is out of control."

"Your _what?_"

"Oh, so you have involuntary selective hearing as well? That's too bad, sir. The Healers say it's permanent. Minister, are you growling?"

"Finish your backlog of paperwork by the end of the day, and _maybe_ I won't fire you, Potter."

"Sorry, did you say something? I saw your lips moving, but I just couldn't hear a thing. Maybe if you wrote it down--"

"_I will end you._"

"Sir, put the chair down. Sir? Oh, shi--")

So, to be fair, maybe Voldeteddy had nothing to do with his darlings' current fortitude in the snake-featured face of immortal lunacy. Maybe he and Ginny and the rest of the Weasleys had just done a fantastic job of raising really stupid kids.

Brave kids, that is. Brave. Not stupid. Brave. Yes. Er.

What had he just been thinking about unthinking bravado, again?

"So. Young Draco tells me you claim to be from another dimension," Voldemort said, pacing back and forth in front of them, robes swishing in an extremely _expensive _way around his pale ankles. The effect was somewhat ruined by his footwear. Someone really ought to tell the bastard that sandals were just not conducive to inspiring fear in _anyone_. He'd thought all criminal masterminds understood instinctively that black leather boots were the way to go.

Voldemort hadn't come to their cell, of course, but had sent a few minions to fetch them and bring them to his—well, his throne room, basically. Lord Voldemort did not, Harry was quite certain, make house calls. Well. Except for the sort that ended with everyone dead, aside from those troublesome occasions when a baby or two managed to survive the Killing Curse with nothing more than a lightning-bolt scar.

The chamber was large and shadowy, empty but for an enormous wooden monstrosity of a chair; a few Death Eaters loitered in the corners, watching with interest, which just topped off the 'my clichés, let me show you them' feel of the scene. Draco was there, probably preening at being called 'young', never mind that it had been by someone who'd outlived his own damn nose. Harry also recognized one of the Carrows, and someone who might have been Crabbe the Younger, only a surprisingly svelte Crabbe the Younger.

There was no one overly important around, he knew that right away. Unless you counted Dolohov, who practically hidden in the shadows, or Fenrir Greyback, lounging near the door—and Harry supposed he did count them, if only because of how much he'd hated their counterparts. Nagini was there too, curled loosely around the throne, still alive and still fairly young-looking. Er. If, you know, giant snakes of killing doom could be called young-looking.

Harry didn't recognize the mansion they were in, which vaguely surprised him. He'd been to most of the pureblood manors in Wizarding Britain, between confiscating collections of Dark Arts books and artifacts and attending private balls and galas as the Ministry's chosen victim—er, esteemed representative. He'd tried to get out of the latter, of course, but Shacklebolt was pure evil and Harry would one day compile enough proof to officially vanquish him, Auror style.

Muahahaha. Ahahah. Ha.

Al kicked him sharply in the ankle, and Harry abruptly remembered that Voldemort was waiting for an answer, and that the Dark Lord probably did not have an abundance of patience when it came to daydreaming prisoners.

"That's right," Harry said warily. "We do come from another dimension, strange and improbable as it sounds. Just arrived this morning, in fact, and we've had a busy time of it since. Wasn't intentional on our part, I'm sad to say."

"And you know who I am?" Voldemort asked. He sounded pleased, probably tickled pink that his counterpart was as famous as he was, like Tom Riddle was destined to become Lord Voldemort in every dimension. This would only end up feeding into the Dark Tosser's delusions of grandeur, no doubt, Harry thought sadly. It was always tragic, when Dark Wizards went bad. Worse. Whatever.

Riddle finally came to a halt right in front of Harry, red eyes fixing on green, like some melodramatic ocular Christmas-time explosion. Harry had prepared himself for this, had spent at least a full ten minutes going over everything he knew about Legilimency and Occlumency (he'd never really bothered learning much, after Voldemort bit the dust--so sue him), and he quickly drew dozens of images from the past couple of decades up to the surface of his mind.

There was an embarrassing fifteen seconds when the memory of exactly what he and Ginny had found in Al's closet after Voldeteddy's Last Stand played out. Which made a horrible kind of sense, given that Harry had just been thinking about the whole farce, but still proved once again that the universe hated him. Even when it was an alternate universe.

(_"For Merlin's sake, Al, there's a _hobo _in your closet!"_

_"Well, I told him he could sleep there, and don't call him 'a hobo', his name is Mervin. Gosh, Mum, you're so _judgmental _sometimes__."_

_"Don't talk to your mother that way. And he has a _knife_, Al!"_

_"Well, sometimes you have to shank people to survive. You of all people should understand that, Dad. And it's a 'shiv'. Really, if you just try to understand other cultures, you'll find that they'll do their best to understand __you."_

_"Uh, actually, guys, I just call it a knife. And I'm pretty sure I never shanked anyone in my life. Sort of thing you'd remember, y'know?"_

_"Shush, Mervin, you needn't justify yourself. Not to __us."_)

Voldemort's brow wrinkled in a way that told Harry that, if he'd still had eyebrows, they would have been nearly at his hairline, if he'd still had hair. He turned a long, assessing stare on Al, who blinked back innocently. And then, thankfully, blessedly, the Dark Lord moved on to the rather more relevant memories Harry had already decided to show him.

He'd prepared a good selection, an assortment of memories that would assuage Voldemort's fears and play up to his vanity. Deaths—not necessarily Voldemort's doing, or the Death Eaters', but they didn't need to be; Harry wasn't the only one with a habit of jumping to conclusions. A few memories of Voldemort himself were thrown in, but they were vague, impersonal ones, nothing that said 'I fought you for seven years and killed you with your own spell, loser'. He added in a healthy dollop of fear for his family, and let the Dark Lord discover traces of resentment for Dumbledore and the Ministry hidden beneath everything else.

Baddock could go screw himself (or, you know, Su Li's scheming, gold-digging cousin—the one with the mole who might or might not actually be a clone of some medieval queen, not the one with the bumpy nose who had a thing for Baddock's kilt-wearing evil twin). He was _totally_ emotionally and mentally complex.

"Yeah, I know who you are," Harry finally managed to gasp out, mind racing as he spouted the lies and half-truths that would get him and his kids out of this intact and reasonably healthy. He couldn't help but feel a sense of profound relief when Voldemort finally pulled out of his mind, crimson eyes bright with contemplation and curiosity and probably other words starting with 'c'. "You're—well, some would say you're a star on rise, as it were. An evil star, some might say. Genocidal evil star." Harry managed to shut himself up before the word 'twinkle' entered the conversation.

Voldemort puffed up a little with each word, all his Evil Overlord Pride showing through in horrible technicolor. But he wasn't an idiot, and he caught on right away to what Harry wasn't saying.

"But not you?" Slytherin's heir murmured curiously, leaning in a bit, close enough that Harry had to force himself not to back away. Voldemort's breath smelt oddly minty, he noted absently. Unexpected side effect of immortality, or the lingering ghost of an herbalicious lunch? Tic-tacs were out of the question, mostly because Harry's brain shut down when he tried to imagine Voldemort waiting impatiently behind a bevy of housewives in a supermarket checkout line, breath mints and a People magazine in hand.

And Harry's scar didn't hurt at all. Interesting, in a 'maybe I should have thought about this earlier instead of succumbing to an auditory flashback of that time Kingsley attacked me with his chair and made me say _involuntary selective hearing_ five times fast before he let me out of the headlock' sort of way.

"I'm more concerned with keeping my family safe than I am with politics," Harry said, which was broadly true. It was just that his active participation in the face-breaking side of politics so often coincided with his family's ongoing safety.

"Commendable," Voldemort murmured in a tone that said he thought it was anything but, backing off a little and taking his minty breath with him before Harry could identify it as either spear- or pepper-. Harry considered the possibility that Voldemort chewed Doublemint Gum, had a terrifying vision of Voldemort and his good twin singing about doubling their pleasure and their fun, and promptly erased the last ten seconds from his memory. "So tell me, Mister…"

Well, Harry had known they'd be getting to this, and sooner rather than later. No use in lying about who he was, none at all; Harry knew that his face and hair practically screamed his identity. Loudly. In that shrill voice Aunt Petunia used whenever she suspected the neighbors might be watching back, dun dun dun _dunnn_. And he could see the suspicion in Voldemort's gaze already, and knew that the slightest hint of a threat, the slightest show of power or subterfuge, would set the Dark Lord off like three Whizbangs tied together and tossed through the Floo to Malfoy Manor.

Not that he'd ever stumbled upon Ginny and James doing such a thing. Certainly not, and even if he had, it wouldn't have been just two weeks ago. And their mad laughter definitely didn't still ring in his ears on dark nights when the wind howled a little too loudly and lightning flashed outside his window.

No, Voldemort already knew who he was. This was just a test to figure out how much Harry knew about the prophecy.

Well, it was Lord Voldething's unlucky day, as his beautiful wife would've said, had she only been around to laugh at his miserable failure at taking a handful of kids out to get school supplies. No one could be best friends with Ron and Hermione for over half their lives without learning how to fudge a few tests. Hermione's vocabulary and Ron's bullshitting skills made for a truly potent combination.

"My name's Potter," Harry said, and tried to look as un-Prophesied and un-Chosen as possible. "Harry Potter."

James slanted him an expressive look, and Harry was chilled by the wicked smile that curled the boy's lips. "Shaken, not stirred?" he murmured, like he wasn't ten feet away from the most dangerous vaguely-human being on the face of—well, this reality's Earth. Scorpius snickered, which proved, in Harry's mind, that teenagers could always ruin a perfectly good opportunity for a real-life cliffhanger. And that Potterness was indeed contagious.

Which explained—well, pretty much everything there was to know about Hermione's life since the Troll Incident (of '91, not to be confused with the Troll Incident of '11, in which _two_ bathrooms, three Puking Pastilles, and considerably less troll snot were involved.)

Someone really had to teach those boys that there was a time and place for James Bond jokes. Harry nominated Percy, because that conversation could only go two ways, and both were bound to make him laugh forever.

* * *

¹ - Uh. I've actually previously written the Broccoli Demonstration as a oneshot. It's up as Broccoli and The Art of Subterfuge. Not to blatantly solicit reviews or anything.


	18. In Which Harry Realizes The Evils of Tel

Disclaimer: I don't own HP. Or. Uh. Sliders, Iron Chef, BSG, or Hell's Kitchen. Oh dear lord, do I wish that wasn't all relevant.

Been watching MST3K episodes like a madwoman. Which explains the surrealism of the bits I stuck in during editing (the surrealism of the original bits is all on me, I'm afraid). Turns out that I can only watch a giant mutated flying turtle destroy Tokyo so many times before it affects my writing skillz. WHOOPS.

* * *

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: In Which Harry Realizes The Evils Of Televised Entertainment

* * *

Someone breathed in sharply—Dolohov, maybe. But Voldemort looked satisfied--the bastard really did like being right. Which was, Harry thought ruefully, probably why he'd never gotten married.

"Harry Potter," the Dark Lord murmured, with a terrifying smile. Yet, Harry noted, he still feared his daughter's smile rather more, particularly when it was used in conjunction with the words 'slumber' and 'party'. He decided then and there that no one ever needed to know he found preteen girls more frightening than full-fledged megalomaniac dark wizards. Kingsley would laugh for _decades_, take a couple of years off for a breather, then keep laughing until he died. "Well, well. I believe you are dead in this world."

'Believe' sounded to Harry an awful lot like 'know for a fact, as I killed you myself and cackled madly over your wee little Chosen corpse', but that could have just been paranoia on his part. Doubtful, but possible. And oh, was Harry ever curious about the exact circumstances of his other self's untimely death. Not to mention, mildly disturbed to find Voldemort's dialogue really _was_ as cheesy as he remembered.

"In a not entirely unrelated subject," Voldemort went on intently, "in this world, your family opposed my ascent to power rather…vocally."

Well. Curiosity assuaged. Horribly, horribly assuaged.

"My parents did in my reality, too," Harry agreed, hoping he looked a little more worried than he actually felt. He was afraid, certainly, because his children were with him and Voldemort was probably immortal and obviously powerful. He knew quite well that if he didn't play this carefully, they'd likely all wind up dead.

But…Voldemort was a monster of his past, along with Bellatrix and Dolohov and Madam Puddifoot's. Harry had faced them all a long time ago, and he'd won. Mindless terror just wasn't in the cards.

Mindful terror, maybe, but he had a fair amount of experience with that—six years of classes with Snape as his professor and decades of reading over Ron's mission reports had pretty much rendered him immune to panic. So he swallowed, widened his eyes a bit (Hermione swore it made him look young, innocent, and confused in a stunned-lemming sort of way), and added, "I imagine that's why you killed them when I was a baby. In my reality, I mean."

"But I left you alive?" Voldemort pressed, and Harry knew it, then, knew for a fact that this version of Tom Riddle was fully aware of the Prophecy of Epic Circular Self-Fulfillment. Okay, so Riddle probably didn't think of the Prophecy in those terms--but the point was, this little interview had just become an active (if figurative) minefield.

Well, when in doubt, act stupid. Nothing made a Slytherin happier than having all their suspicions about Gryffindor idiocy confirmed, and right now, Harry really didn't want Voldemort to be unhappy.

"Well, yeah," he said, in his best clueless voice (guaranteed to make Hermione throw up her hands in frustration and storm away mid-rant, something that had saved him and Ron more than a few times over the long and eventful courses of their lives). "Can't imagine you thought I'd be worth killing. I mean, I was just a year old at the time, right?"

"Of course," Voldemort murmured, impressing Harry when he added without a hint of irony, "Your alternate self was hardly a threat. But—you say that your parents faced me and died doing so?"

"Second time they came up against you in person," Harry lied, inserting a touch of rebellious pride into his tone, because there were limits to what the Dark Lord and his followers would buy from a Potter. Presumably, at least, because Merlin knew he'd run mental rings around them when he was still prepubescent.

Voldemort's gaze sharpened. "_Second_ time," he repeated slowly. "So they defied me only twice."

Harry resisted the urge to beam proudly at that particular untruth—it was an almost Slytherin misdirection, he thought. Baddock might even be impressed enough to promote him from the extremely-lower-middle-class of his new world order. But then again, Harry _had_ been the one to introduce George Weasley to minesweeper. That alone qualified him for eternal moronhood in his _own _opinion, and probably made him too stupid to live in Baddock's.

"Not much 'only twice' about it," Harry said, growing more confident as he went on without Voldemort stopping him and accusing him of being a giant lying liarface (Lily really did have a way with words--one roughly equivalent to the way rakish piercing-eyed pirates had with young corseted maidens in those books Bill pretended not to read). "Don't know that many people manage to defy you more than once without it having, er, consequences. Fatal consequences," he added, because you didn't have to be evil to use dramatic pauses, though admittedly it helped.

"I see. It is very pragmatic of you, Harry Potter, to recognize your position now," Voldemort said, and Harry was a little worried by the light of interest in the Dark Lord's stare. Damn it, he was supposed to be _uninteresting_. He'd deliberately crafted about the most boring persona _ever_. Trust a Slytherin to try and read depth and complexity into Harry's idea of the epitome of dullness. (Harry carefully did not let himself consider that perhaps his idea of 'interesting' was skewed more towards explosions and quippy one-liners than subtle personal nuance.) "I would have expected an orphan of my own making to…resent me."

"Like I said, I'm more concerned with keeping my current family alive than anything," Harry replied, as tersely as he dared. When Riddle's bright red eyes narrowed to slits, he hastily decided that terse was not the way to go. "Besides, _you_ didn't kill my parents. This isn't even my dimension. I can tell 'cause I haven't seen a single Starbucks yet."

"What is this…Starbucks?" Dolohov asked curiously, earning himself a warning glance from Voldemort--but not an Unforgivable, which Harry found quite interesting, before the question registered and his mind went horribly blank. Starbucks was, well, _Starbucks. _Explaining a chain of Muggle coffee shops to a pack of pureblood wizards would be like explaining the desert to school of dolphins.

"Starbucks. Think about it: star bucks. Mutant deer from space. Very common in our dimension," James said easily. Which was bad enough, but then he added, "Natural enemies of the Cylons."

And Al, dear sweet intelligent Al, went and added, "Starbucks are also known for being bizarrely fond of cigars and alcohol and personal drama. Ironically, though they're called 'bucks', they're actually the females of their species. We call the males Apollos."

"Oh, those lovable mutant space deer," James sighed.

Voldemort and his lackeys strove to remain expressionless, some of them going so far as to nod sagely, like the boys' explanation sounded perfectly reasonable and not at all like a pile of steaming mutant space deer defecation.

Harry decided none of his children were ever watching television again. Ever.

"I...see. Yes, your dimension. Tell me, Harry, what do you do in your dimension?" The familiarity in Voldemort's tone was disturbing, deeply disturbing, but it wasn't like Harry could bust out a 'Back off, buddy, last names only'. He had a feeling that if Voldemort decided you were on a first name basis, then you really didn't want to argue.

"Do?" Harry repeated blankly. What the hell was Voldemort looking for? A confession of Chosen One-ness? An admission that in his spare time, he went around destroying horcruxes and coming back from the dead? Love?

"Your profession," the Dark Lord clarified impatiently. "What is your profession?"

Oh. That wasn't exactly a question Harry had expected. Still, though, he'd been thorough when he'd thought of his new persona's background, so he wasn't entirely unprepared. "I'm a cook," Harry half-lied earnestly.

"A cook who took out four of my finest with consummate ease," Voldemort said flatly.

_Right_, Harry thought. He'd forgotten about that. Whoops. Though he had to admit to some mild offense that Voldemort could take the Starbucks idiocy in stride but object to his supposed job.

"Er. Ever seen Iron Chef? Hell's Kitchen?" he asked rather hopelessly.

The purebloods present stared in confusion. Voldemort nodded thoughtfully, shocking Harry right to his toes and the tips of his hair—and, for that matter, planting some truly disturbing mental images in his mind.

Victoire made an odd little choking noise, and Harry couldn't blame her at all. The thought of Voldemort kicking back in a leather Lazy Boy, nursing a beer and flipping through channels on the telly... Oh Merlin, what if Voldemort watched football or something? It wasn't right. Not right at all.

"You have a point," Voldemort allowed, rubbing a finger along his thin lower lip. "From what I've observed, it can be a truly...vicious career."

"And the others?" Dolohov demanded from the shadows. Once again, Voldemort didn't really seem to mind the interruption—either this Tom Riddle was considerably more chill than the one Harry had ruthlessly disarmed to death, or Dolohov was more important than he'd always assumed. Really, it was getting to be embarrassing, how little Harry actually knew of the Death Eaters' inner workings. "What of them? Who are they?"

"Inquiring minds," Fenrir said, with a grin that revealed a mouth full of sharp, yellowing teeth. Harry told himself that if they got through this all intact, he'd reward himself by hexing the wolf right out of Greyback. If nothing else, it'd be satisfying as hell.

In the meantime, though, he supposed he ought to play along. "Oh, the boys are my sons. Except Teddy, who's my godson—he's part of the Black clan, actually, and Victoire here is his girlfriend. Oh, and this is Scorpius Malfoy—good friends of my family, the Malfoys."

Harry cringed a little at how heavily he was laying it on; he might as well be jabbering 'see, I know purebloods, I'm friends with purebloods, no Muggles here, no sir' in Voldemort's face. Subtle, it was not. But he supposed it would help his image as, well, as the Somewhat-Dim-And-Fearful-One-Who-Is-Not-Chosen-At-All-Except-By-Four-Out-Of-Every-Five-Food-Critics.

An idea occurred to him, then, one that would probably end badly but might just possibly save their lives. "And Victoire—I'm also training her up as my assistant." In the absence of any actual adults, Victoire was the person he trusted most to help him keep the others alive and well. There was a slim chance that her being his assistant would be reason enough for the Death Eaters to overlook any plotting they might do ("Escape plans? What escape plans? We're just discussing the best way to glaze salmon").

He just really, really hoped no one thought to actually test Victoire's cooking prowess. Unless she decided to make her infamous Mussel Curry again, in which case Voldemort's entire side would all be indisposed for days and Harry and his spawnlings could make their escape at leisure.

"Your...assistant," Voldemort repeated, glancing at her. Harry could understand his skepticism, if not his out-of-control addiction to dramatic pauses—Victoire looked a bit younger than she actually was, what with the pink hair and freckles. In all honesty, she didn't look quite old enough to be out of Hogwarts just yet, much less graduated and holding a steady job.

"Get 'em while they're young, yeah?" Harry said weakly.

"Yeah," Greyback said, leering.

"...Oh, _ew_," Harry muttered. He really _hated_ Greyback. Plenty of Death Eaters were absolute scumbags, but Greyback, he was something special, and not just because he was probably the only one with fleas. Er. Probably the only one with fleas. And by special, Harry meant 'psychotic pervert fit only to be fertilizer for the Whomping Willow'.

"What was that?" Voldemort asked suspiciously, eyes narrowing.

"I said--'true'. I was agreeing with him agreeing with me," Harry said hastily. "Because agreeing is my way. I'm very agreeable. Uh."

"I admeet, I do not cook well yet," Victoire spoke up in a heavy and painfully Monty Pythonesque French accent, thankfully turning attention away from Harry's fumbled explanation (though sadly spoiling the Mussel Curry plan). "But I am useful in ze leenguistics area, you see? After all, 'oo would trust an English cook? I provide ze necessary palatable accent, and ze customers, they line up to 'ear my lilting tones and taste 'Arry's deelicious cooking!"

Harry shot his niece a 'what are you doing, you're making this worse, and also a '_palatable accent? _Seriously_, what the hell_' glare, but to his shock, all of the pureblooded Death Eaters were nodding as if she made perfect sense. Victoire smiled a touch smugly, and Teddy had this sappy, adoring, lascivious smile on his face that made Harry recall the old days of messy diapers and snotty noses fondly.

Voldemort blinked, and it was just wrong on so many levels—on _every _level, in fact—that he and Harry seemed to be the only ones questioning Victoire's, ah, logic.

"I see," the Dark Lord said slowly, in the tones of one who did in fact not see but would not admit to it on pain of death. Harry, for possibly the first time in his entire life, gave fervent thanks for the Wizarding World's collective barminess.

"Look," he said, taking advantage of the Dark Lord's confusion, "can't you just let us go? I'm really sorry about pwning--er, I mean, taking out your followers." Silently, he cursed Lily and her contagious slanging ways. He was really starting to consider just grounding all of his children on principle when they got back to their own universe. "But—we're not a threat or anything. We're only, you know, innocent interdimensional travelers, just searching for a way home."

"You watch the Sci-Fi channel," Voldemort accused, much to the Death Eaters' mass bewilderment.

"Sometimes," Harry admitted, ashamed, then paused. "Wait. You do, too?"

"Surely you did not think you were the first wizard to cross dimensions? 'Sliders' was based on a mudblood wizard's real-life experiences," Voldemort said, sneering, though it was anyone's guess if the sneer was for Harry, the muggleborn wizard, or Sliders itself. "An unfortunate manner of documentation, but magical history is magical history, regardless. Just replace the ridiculous 'fizzicks' with magic and you have something resembling the truth."

"Huh," Harry said, more troubled than he wanted to admit by the realization that Arthur Weasley and Lord Voldemort both pronounced 'physics' the same way. And he had a sudden, horrible feeling that his research for getting himself and his family back home was going to involve a Sliders marathon. "And, er. Iron Chef?"

"Anthropological study," Voldemort claimed, eyes narrowing slightly. Harry decided it would be wise to just smile and nod, and thank Merlin that the Dark Lord wasn't quite enough of a Sci-Fi fan to pick up on James' Battlestar reference.

Voldemort relaxed when no further challenges were forthcoming. "You are not lying about your unexpected visit to our reality, I can see that much in your mind. Or about your unfortunate tastes in entertainment." Harry thought that was a bit rich, coming from someone who admitted to watching Sliders and willingly employed Fenrir Greyback and Bellatrix Lestrange, but was wise enough to keep his objections to himself.

For now, anyway, though he figured if he got dragged into defeating Voldemort in _this_ world, he'd have a few choice words to say at their final showdown. Of course, that meant coming up with some new material. Quoting his own decades-old I'm-going-to-kill-you-once-I'm-done-telling-you-all-the-ways-you-suck speech was probably a violation of one of his kids' mystifying and complex laws of coolness.

The urge to issue the Dark Lord a good scolding was only reaffirmed when Voldemort added, "But I'm afraid I cannot let you go." Something about his face looked—greedy, if not downright hungry. Harry hoped the hunger was just for some prime home cooking, but rather doubted it. "You fought and vanquished some of my finest Death Eaters. You clearly are an extremely powerful wizard, as well as a visitor from an entirely different reality. I would be a fool to set you free."

"Everybody plays the fool sometimes," Harry offered hopefully. Dumbledore _had_ once said that music was a magic beyond anything taught at Hogwarts, a sentiment strengthened by Victoire's creation of The Spell (he chose not to remember that Dumbledore had also said with great importance, in the same speech, the words 'nitwit', 'oddment', 'tweak', and 'blubber'). And no one knew better than Harry that overused clichés had a power all their own, a power greater than—hell, greater than love or death or even taxes, probably.

"I am not 'everybody'," Voldemort replied coolly, unfazed by Harry's cunning deployment of classic song lyrics. "Dolohov. Escort our guests to their new quarters."

"Really, Dad? _Really?_" James asked scornfully as Dolohov ushered them towards the door, a glare simmering in his eyes, a few vaguely familiar-looking Death Eaters at his side.

"Music is supposed to be a magic greater than, well, probably any magic other than love," Harry protested feebly.

"Yeah, but Lite FM? Talk about turning it down to negative eleven." James tsked, shaking his head sadly at his father's misguided ways. "Hard rock's the answer, if you want power."

Harry shuddered and darted a glance at Victoire, who looked everywhere but back at him and did her best to convey with the set of her shoulders and the length of her stride that she knew nothing about The Spell, no sir, never heard of such a thing, whatchu talkin' 'bout, Willis?

"Oh, I know," he said darkly. "_I know._"

Dolohov cleared his throat, exchanging significant looks with one of the more intelligent-looking lackeys. "Negative eleven? Light effem? Hard rock? What's that all mean?" he asked suspiciously.

Teddy smirked in a particularly Blackish way as James brightened and exchanged a conspiratorial look with Al. "This is going to be worse than the mutant deer," Scorpius predicted to Harry in an undertone, with a resigned sigh.

Harry could only watch in awe as his sons managed to convince Dolohov, over the course of their rather short walk to their new and improved cell, that the Lite FM was a particularly deadly group of wizarding assassins employed by the Minister in their world, and that the 'hard rock hex' was a spell they used to bury their enemies in falling stones. ("Resulting in the famous and oft-quoted Quibbler headline of '83, 'Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies'," Al said in his most officious lecturing tone.)

Correction, he thought to himself, stunned. _Bullshitting_ is a magic greater than both music and love.

And after a moment of reflection, he realized Dumbledore must have known that all along.

* * *

Not that I'm a KaraLee shipper or anything. Nope.


	19. In Which Snape's, Like, Human

Disclaimer: HP isn't mine. The phrase 'trick or treat', however, is. I'm expecting royalties, people.

Yeah, so, been a while. I kind of lost motivation during a bout of Major Authoring Insecurity ("Oh god why am I writing this shit, it's so ridiculously self-indulgent and crappy and _stupid_"). But then I got a couple of reviews that reminded me that hey, some people enjoy ridiculous self-indulgence and stupidity, and that I am in fact one of them and quite like writing this thing. SO. Sorry about the wait. Also, I've been writing Hikaru no Go fic like a crazy person.

In other news, One Piece is awesometastic. The best part? Knowing that I've still got _three hundred and fifty episodes_ to go.

* * *

CHAPTER NINETEEN: In Which Snape Is, Like, Human Or Some Weird Shit Like That

* * *

The Not-Granddaughter ("Oh, for crying out loud, just call me Lilsy, everyone _else_ does. Except for Mom. And Mister Malfoy. And Uncle Neville and Aunt Hermione and Aunt Luna—she calls me LL the Pottster, don't even _ask_, it's some kind of rap phase or something…") was decidedly displeased when Severus declared that there was an Order meeting he and Lily absolutely had to attend.

She was even less pleased when she realized James would be staying behind to keep an eye on her—"I'm eleven whole years old, peeps, I don't need a, a babysitter. This is _totes_ _grodiferous._ Do you know what my brothers and I _do_ to our babysitters? We've been blacklisted since I was three." She paused, scowling. "Eight years, and still no one believes that the tar was my hovering overhead lightbulb."

They stared.

"Idea, people, idea. You know those cartoons with the lightbulb going off when someone's got a plan or whatevs?"

"You," Severus announced, and Lily thought she could almost see the migraine forming, "are the monster hiding under the English language's bed." The girl beamed for a moment, before remembering she was supposed to be annoyed.

"What's a lightbub?" James asked.

Severus twitched.

James was well aware that no Order meeting had been called, but despite his confusion and annoyance at being left out ("Not to mention this lightbub business," he grumbled), he agreed to remain behind. Lily suspected he gave in so that he could continue trying to argue their young pseudo-relative out of her determination to accompany them on their quite possibly fatal and most likely futile rescue mission.

"Quite possibly fatal and most likely futile rescue mission _of awesome_," was the girl's unfazed reply.

"We'll talk in the tunnels," Severus murmured quietly as they left the two Potters to yell at each other about propriety and stupidity and the importance of not being a corpse versus the importance of having half a dozen eternally grateful relatives at your beck and call ("Okay," James admitted, "that's a good point. But still—").

Lily nodded back, gnawing on her lower lip nervously.

They walked quickly towards the trap door leading to the tunnels, and Lily felt absolutely smothered by the awkward silence surrounding them. Smothering them. Blanketing them like, well, a big fat fluffy smothering blanket. Severus had been her closest friend, a very long time ago, but—she'd never been able to forgive him for choosing the Death Eaters over her. And he'd never been able to forgive her for giving up on him, not really.

Plus, there'd been that, ah, inconvenient little crush thing he'd had going on when they were teenagers. Which…just, no. Not ever. _No._

She still missed him as a friend, though, even after so many years. She'd gotten to an age where she'd started spending a little too much time weighing up her regrets, and leaving him behind in Hogwarts was a big one. She'd tried to make up with him a few times after Harry died, and they got along well enough now, but she always felt like there was an indefinable distance between them that made true friendship impossible.

Well, she thought grimly, if he didn't have a damn good explanation for giving in to the younger Lily's demands, that distance would be bridged in a hurry—by her fist hitting his nose. Totes.

Lily turned on him the moment they climbed into the tunnels, finally safe from any eavesdropping—and on that count, she trusted James about as much as she trusted the younger Lily.

One thousand years of hellish torment wouldn't have been enough to make her admit that she was even worse than her husband when it came to nosiness.

She meant to get the first word (and hopefully the last, though probably not all at the same time), maybe start out with something snappy like, "Severus, what the hell are you thinking, if you're thinking at all?" But what came out was a quiet, almost tense, "You've met him—met Harry. What…what is he like?"

Severus looked startled by the question, nearly as startled as she felt. But now that she'd asked, she needed the answer, needed to _know_. Because there was a damn good chance she'd never find out for herself, given the current situation.

"Please," she added raggedly when he hesitated.

"He is...very obviously a Potter," Severus said slowly, which could mean any number of things, coming from him, and none of them complimentary. He paused, then, and got that awkward, trapped look Lily remembered so well from their adolescence, when he was always blushing and stuttering around her—like he was at a total loss, and wasn't sure whether to blame her or himself or maybe the Marauders, just on principle.

But for once, he didn't immediately go on the offensive or try to recover his cool with a dismissive or snide remark, which meant more to her than she was entirely comfortable admitting. Severus swallowed and told her, "He has your eyes."

"I remember," Lily said, thickly.

"And while his children are largely insufferable, and he seems to have only a nominal control of their actions—he struck me as being a decent man," Severus went on, hurriedly, looking more and more pained with every faintly approving remark. "Certainly more so than your husband or your other children." The virulence of the last bit would normally have gotten her hackles on the rise, but Lily was too astonished at hearing Severus say something almost flattering about a Potter to really register the insult.

"Why, Severus," she said, because it was easier to be amused than to register all the emotions his words had stirred up in her. "I'm surprised you didn't implode at the 'decent man' part."

Severus fixed her with a look dark enough to make lesser men or women tremble. Lily wasn't overly impressed—she'd seen him try that look on for size when he still had pimples, and nothing would ever be scarier than _that_.

"Now," she went on, "about whatever you have planned for that little girl—"

"Tell me something," he interrupted, voice going all deep and impatient and dangerously silky, like that could make her forget the near Hallmark-sentimentality of the last minute or so. Also, she was never, ever going to forgive herself for thinking the words 'dangerously silky'. "What is the very first thing a Potter—any natural-born Potter, at least—does when someone in a position of authority tells them _not_ to do something?"

"That's easy. They go ahead and do it anyway," Lily said automatically, then paused.

Oh, she thought.

"_Oh_," she said.

"Yes. 'Oh'. We string her along until we are ready to go, we pick her brains for whatever useful information she might have, and then we stun her and pack her off to Lupin or someone else with enough patience to not kill her after the eighth 'for realz, yo'." He spoke the words like the very syllables were contaminated with some sort of fatal flesh-eating disease, and had to be handled with proper care lest he become infected.

Lily felt her face go a little red, as she realized that for a while there, she'd actually really thought he'd put a child in that kind of danger. Maybe he was right to be annoyed with her. It wasn't like she hadn't been justified in thinking the worst of him in the past—but their Hogwarts days were long over, and he'd proven himself repeatedly since them.

It was enough to make a girl (well, woman of a certain age) feel kind of guilty, really.

"Okay," she said, the fight gone out of her. "Good plan. But…the invisibility—do you think she was telling the truth? How could that little girl make herself invisible and undetectable?"

Severus smiled thinly, then, looking insufferably self-satisfied as he pulled produced something small and glittery from his breast pocket. "I know for a fact that she was telling the truth. The Death Eaters missed one of the brats' bags. I did not. There were five of these inside."

She took the tiny object from him, deeply curious. It was a small, sparkly, silvery candy, with miniscule white letters spelling out 'Invisibites by WWW' on the otherwise clear wrapper.

"Her great mystery mojo is…candy?" Lily demanded, horrified. "She was going to entrust her safety—_her family's rescue_—to a candy?"

Severus snatched it back from her, because he was a greedy mistrustful bastard, and tucked it back into his pocket. "I am choosing to ignore the fact that you just uttered the words 'mystery mojo'. One day, I may even respect you again, though it won't be soon."

"Oh, shut up."

"And her idea was not as foolish a decision as it sounds," he allowed, rather grudgingly. "I tested one of the candies already. They last approximately fifty-three minutes, and they do provide complete invisibility for that entire period. Whoever created them must be a Master Brewer."

Lily eyed him suspiciously. "You're planning on remaking them here, aren't you," she accused. Even if Severus hadn't always had rather flexible moral ideals, there had to be some sort of natural Slytherin imperative that would've taken over and forced his hand in this.

"Eventually," he agreed, unashamed. "And patenting them and selling them. They will be extremely expensive, of course, given that a majority of the ingredients are difficult to procure." Avarice put a sparkle in his eyes that absolutely did not belong there, at all, ever. Snapes were not built to sparkle.

Actually, she didn't know many people who _were_ built to sparkle, though young Cedric Diggory was looking strangely glittery these days. She'd asked Amos about it, but he'd just cleared his throat awkwardly and muttered something about Cedric's wife being rabidly Team Edward. Lily still had no idea what that meant, and wasn't sure she ever wanted to know.

"Fifty-three minutes," Lily repeated, deciding that a debate about the ethics of patenting products from another reality could wait for another day. "That won't be long enough."

"Not for three people," Severus said. "Not with four candies. But I will not be using any, which gives you and your…spouse…nearly two hours each."

"Severus--"

"I am a spy," he snapped, irritated. Lily decided she wasn't going to tell him she'd been less concerned about his well-being and more amused by his physical inability to call James her husband. "The Dark Lord thinks me his most loyal servant. I do not need to sneak in when I can walk unchallenged through the front door."

"You mean he doesn't have a secret password?" Lily asked, disappointed. "Not even an exchange of nonsense phrases to determine your identity?"

"'Die, Mudblood scum' does not count as a valid password," Severus grumbled. "McNair has no imagination. It's the 'swordfish' of dark wizards."

"I…see." Lily found that she couldn't help but think that if she had to be a part of an organization fighting the darkest evil to rear its ugly head in centuries, then that evil could at least have the decency to be a little less embarrassingly lame.

"Besides, I will hardly be breaking your Not-Son out myself—you and your husband can accomplish that part of the plan yourselves. In this matter, I will deal in information, infiltration, and distraction only."

Lily didn't like it, but arguing would only offend him, and that would only make him more stubbornly opposed to whatever she had to say. "Fine," she said curtly. "Now, are we sure that the, ah, the little Lily won't catch on?"

Severus rolled his eyes. "She's eleven years old and a Potter. Her master plan is 'candy'. How clever can she possibly be?"

"Point," Lily agreed with a snort, conveniently forgetting that _their_ master plan had become 'stolen candy', with a side helping of 'spies'. "Well then, tell me. What kind of plot are you cooking up in that giant brain?"

He cast a dark glance her way. "What makes you so certain I have a plan more involved than 'turn you and your spouse invisible and send you on your merry and suicidal way'?"

"Please. You over-think everything, Sev, this entire deception with Little Lily is pretty much a real-life illustration of that. And you've been smiling that nasty little smile of yours, the same one you always get when you've come up with something particularly humiliating to spring on my husband and his friends."

Severus eyed her oddly, and she realized belatedly that she'd called him 'Sev' for the first time in…well, ages. Huh. Apparently it was true, what the Slytherins said—the family that schemes together, stays together. Or something like that, probably with a couple of epithets about muddy blood and pureblood superiority 4evah thrown in for the look of things.

"I'm waiting to hear from the other spy before I finalize anything," he finally said, apparently letting the nickname thing go for the moment. Lily bit back a triumphant smile, because that was a definite sign he was at least partially willing to help her mend old, broken bridges.

It was surprising, how much she'd missed him. Decades and decades of hurt anger and strained civility—who'd have thought that beneath it all, something good yet remained?

Funny, the places where you could find a bit of good, buried beneath the ugly and the wrong and the bad. Like the second spy—Severus' own recruit, his back-up for the inevitable day when Voldemort wised the hell up and realized that Snape was playing him like a particularly grotesque, bald, and sibilant fiddle.

Oh, wait. Shit. No, not enough emphasis—_shit._

"Uh," Lily said, suddenly worried. "I don't suppose we can just…not mention to James where, exactly, you're getting your information?"

* * *

I know. It's like I forgot I was writing crack there for a bit. WHOOPS.


End file.
